Book review: My Struggle: The End, By Karl Ove Knausgaard

The End by Karl Ove Knausgård
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

And so it is done. Here the small excursions into kulchah criticism Karl engaged in in the first five books are significantly expanded. So there are really two very different books here. One a terse and terrifying critique of Hitler, Hitler's books and the Holocaust that asks many questions about the nature of identity on both a personal and societal level and how such horror is permitted and enacted and affiliated discussions of art, lit, language, culture, politics, philosophy; one the usual Karlautofic set in the present as he wrote book six and mostly detailing his family life and all that went down as the first books were published - some of which gets pretty heavy for Karl and his circle as the real life consequences of often unpleasant autobiographical revelation kick in. E.g. Getting sued, scorned by mother-in-law, friends, other writers.
I could try to explain why it is so compelling, but would fail. Something about the complicated everyman-cum-intellectual snared in life's systems with nothing to lose or at least the sense of nothing to lose. risking a great deal in the service of some reformation of what literature can be.
His estranged ex-wife whose mental health issues he documented in such excruciating detail calls him a narcissist. She may be right. Certainly these books have hurt people in rare ways. Not the good ship literature though...

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