Karl Ove Knausgaard

I've been touring the seasons with Karl Ove Knausgaard; our most recent stop: Spring. 

I have to say at the start that while I liked this installment, I didn't find it as compelling as the first two: Fall and Winter. Perhaps that's because the content of this edition is a departure from those before it: in Spring, Knausgaard tells a story involving his family; the style and approach here are more reminiscent of My Struggle than of Fall or Winter, in which Knausgaard effectively offers short, aphoristic meditations on topics relevant to the season. 

Which is not to say that I didn't enjoy the book; it's more that I found it a little light: more a shell than a fully formed piece. As in previous volumes, Spring hinges on Knausgaard's newborn daughter; his relationship with her; her relationship with her siblings; and everyone's relationship with Knausgaard's wife, who struggles throughout Spring with mental illness and depression. Despite her absence, she's the figure, really, who propels the book, who drives Knausgaard to action. 

Of course Knausgaard's willingness to reveal the details of his wife's struggle -- and of his family's response to it -- can make for some uncomfortable reading. I felt the same way while reading the first volume of My Struggle: there's a sense in which Knausgaard's revealed too much: that even though I admire his honesty, I worry that he's using his family to advance a narrative that's not entirely his own. It can be too intimate. Though again, I think there's something laudable about this approach.

For me, one of the most lasting sections of Spring focuses on the distinction Knausgaard draws between the banal and the magical. "It was as if," he writes, "our lives played out in the borderland between two parallel realities." I think there's something to this: that, despite the often mundane aspects of our lives, we're still in the end surrounded by beauty. And so in this sense, Spring reads as a reminder: to seek that beauty, and to recognize wonder. We should be as children: giddy with excitement upon discovering the world around us.