This “honesty” – although in a fictionalised memoir, can we trust anything? – means that Knausgaard is unsparing in his self-depiction. It’s like someone reading out the telephone directory. He is far too busy telling you exactly what he was given for supper as a child – “when we came into the kitchen, there were two glasses of milk and two plates, each with four slices of bread plus toppings.” (which particular description continues, I kid you not, for at least half a page) – or telling you what walk he’s been on – “As a rule it was along Rådmansgatan, then down Holländergatan to Tegnérgatan where I crossed Sveavägen and followed Döbelsngatan up to St Johannes’ Church” – for anything to burst out of the page. 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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