![]() ![]() The problem is that Knausgaard’s unflinching honesty, so admired throughout Europe, leaves little room for characters to grow, for scenes to live. The central event – if it can be called an event, because when it happened I didn’t really notice and had to go back and read it again – is the death of his father, and Knausgaard’s acceptance of their emotionally complicated relationship. Narrated by Knausgaard himself, it takes us from his middle-class childhood through to his current existence as a successful writer. The book is billed as “memoir written as fiction”, which, as far as I can work out, means that it’s fiction. Well, it says “collaborated”, but that’s the feeling you get – fervid, sweaty, sexual. If Proust and Jonathan Franzen had mated, this would be the result. ![]() The book’s been “declared a literary masterpiece”, apparently, wherever it has been published. “Meet Europe’s New Literary Star,” screams the proof copy, which boasts a picture of the author looking like a superannuated Jon Bon Jovi. The publicity puffery that surrounds A Death in the Family is more than usually hyperbolic. A Death in the Family by Karl Ove Knausgaard (Harvill Secker) ![]()
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