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Books

Karl Ove Knausgaard describes nothing happening — wonderfully

Like the rest of My Struggle, this fifth volume, with its loving descriptions of everyday life, will be sheer magic to aficionados

12 March 2016

9:00 AM

12 March 2016

9:00 AM

Some Rain Must Fall: My Struggle, Volume V Karl Ove Knausgaard, translated by Don Bartlett

Harvill Secker, pp.665, £17.99, ISBN: 9781846558276

It is hard to explain the contents of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s vast series My Struggle because not much happens. Or rather: a lot of things almost happen. In these strange and unquantifiable books, which feel like a spiritual autobiography but read like trashy fiction, Knausgaard recounts his ambiguous relationships with his brother and parents and wives; he describes terrible-sounding meals which he cooks (he eats a lot of pasta with dubious sauces) and the rambling, incomplete conversations he has with acquaintances.

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