Book Review - Winter by Karl Ove Knausgaard

Karl Ove Knausgaard’s Winter is published in the UK on the same day in November as Ali Smith’s Winter. Both writers are now two books into their seasonal quartets, each of them having begun with Autumn.

Knausgaard got there first, kickstarting his cycle in his native Norway one year earlier in 2015; Smith had the last laugh by writing the better book and making the shortlist for this year’s Man Booker Prize.

Not that Knausgaard’s book would have qualified. His seasonal volumes are not novels but, according to the back cover, “memoir/essays”. However, the many pieces within are often too general to count as memoir and too short to be termed essays.

This isn’t the only instance of difficulty in pinning Knausgaard down. The jury is still out on whether his other series, the acclaimed My Struggle project, can tidily be categorised as “fiction”. 

Doesn’t an author’s relived and reimagined account of adolescence and adulthood merit the cross-breed classification of “fictionalised autobiography”?

How we pigeonhole Knausgaard’s Winter and how it measures up against Smith’s book of the same name is, in the end, immaterial.

What matters of course is its quality as a standalone book. But it’s worth noting that, unlike Smith with her seasonal sequence, Knausgaard has changed tack, branched out and attempted something artistically different.

His enterprise is bolder and as such, riskier. A bad season from Smith is a weak novel, nothing more. A bad season from Knausgaard is a weak link which jeopardises the entire project. So does Winter work? 

Answering that requires an evaluation not only of content but intent. Both Autumn and Winter are odes to Knausgaard’s unborn daughter. The books are divided into three months.

Each month contains 20 “essays” – or rather two – or three-page discussions of, or meditations on, a range of topics. Some unfold in a single, unbroken paragraph, others are more reader-friendly.

Knausgaard prefaces each monthly section with a letter to his child in which he comments on her development and his state of mind. Then the months begin and he proceeds to explore what the book jacket calls “the wonders of life”.

A quick scroll through the book’s contents renders the publisher’s blurb laughable, for while Knausgaard muses on bona fide wonders such as the moon, the brain, water and atoms, he also devotes his attention to some less miraculous subjects: manholes, Q-tips, toothbrushes and windows.

Also included are profiles and character sketches, concepts and perspectives (Hollow Spaces, Vanishing Point, The Social Realm) and extended thoughts on animals, body parts, feelings and habits.

Whatever the topic, whether concrete or abstract, ordinary or extraordinary, Knausgaard proves to be an expert examiner. With satisfying regularity he comes in at oblique angles and finds unexpected facets and original insight. Ingvild Burkey has skilfully translated. Lars Lerin’s illustrations capture the beauty and the bleakness of the season.

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Original review on: www.thenational.ae