Karl Ove Knausgaard

Well, I've made it: I've toured the seasons with Karl Ove Knausgaard.

Most recent was Summer, the final volume of his seasonal quartet. This installation was similar to the others in its tone and approach, but different, I felt, too. 

As with the other volumes, Summer offers brief mediations on a range of seemingly banal topics: everything from clothing and bicycles, to dogs and wasps. In almost all of these essays, Knausgaard manages to derive some unexpected meaning, some sort of aphoristic conclusion. 

I must say, I came to enjoy these meditations: not just in Summer, but in the other volumes as well. Sure, they're delicate, and they can be a bit contrived. But they served, for me, as a reminder of the beauty that surrounds us. In this sense, I found them inspiring: they ask us to look, and look again, and to embrace the mundane: for in it,  Knausgaard seems to imply, there must be a spark. 

Where Summer differs from the other volumes is in two extended sections which include Knausgaard's journal entries. These, I felt, were less effective, and could be rather self-indulgent. The second of these sections, though, does include an interesting -- if not fully evolved -- fictional rendering of a love story from the Second World War. The story seemed oddly placed among Knausgaard's diary entries, but did serve, I suppose, as a welcome interlude. 

All told, I'm really pleased with Knausgaard's seasonal quartet. As I say, there's a quality to each volume that inspires, that asks readers to reconsider their lives and the objects surrounding them. I found this refreshing, and refreshingly hopeful. No doubt, the diary sections of Summer, especially, can be a little trying, but that doesn't cloud the rest of the collection, which includes a number of thoughtful observations on the world around us.