My Struggle #4: Dancing in the Dark by Karl Ove Knausgaard

The back of this book asks, "Why would you read a six-volume, 3,600-page Norwegian novel about a man writing a six-volume, 3,600-page Norwegian novel?" and my answer is because I can't NOT read it. Because it feels like Karl Ove Knausgaard is speaking directly to me. Because out of these 3,600 pages, not one of them is sugarcoated, sterilized or bent into a form that makes the author appear anything other than what he is: complicated, self-deprecating, conceited, embarrassed, talented, anxious, fallible. This series is an x-ray of a human life: it's unedited, bare, and unfiltered. It shows us that life is messy. That life is hard. That some days we achieve the highest of highs and we're soaring and some days we faceplant.

This book makes the carefree nostalgia of youth come alive and brought me straight back to similar escapades I was enjoying at the same age. At the same time, it reminds us that life is a series of conundrums, and that the teenage/early adult years are really nothing close to carefree. That at the age of eighteen, every thought we have about love, career prospects, freedom, and how we're perceived by others is thought out, replayed, examined and pored over on an infinitely looping, exhausting mental reel. Karl Ove's eighteenth year is pretty typical in this way. It's steeped in hormones, blackouts, first jobs, friends and parties. And girls. Lots and lots of girls.

Although we are essentially following a placeholder year in the author's life when he's moved away from home for the first time to a small town, Halfjord in Northern Norway, teaching for a year while saving money to travel and become a writer, we spend a considerable time (as in the previous books in the series) detouring down memory lane, immersed in several adventures from his youth before drawing us back via the scenic route to complete the circle.

In Dancing in the Dark, we see a revolving cast of characters come in and out of Karl Ove's life. Once again, we are in the shadow of a dark, distrustful and increasingly distant father who is losing himself in alcohol. We cling to an older brother who is a support system and an everyday hero to his younger brother. We witness a cherished mother who is scraping by in a newly single life, sturdy but weary. We hang out with fellow teachers, we meet nosy neighbours and self-assured students. But the main attraction is the girls. They are the brightest stars of the peep show of Karl Ove's life here. Older women, younger schoolgirls, fellow teachers, lusted-after friends, one-night stands, unrequited love, girls who want him, girls who don't...Karl Ove seems drawn to nearly every single one of them. He is absolutely girl crazy, with a near-obsessive focus on losing his virginity. Once again, through his unique lens, each moment of his self-loathing, his conceit, and his experience is uncomfortably palpable. He brings us along for every starkly awkward conversation and fumbling encounter. Whenever failure presents itself, whenever Karl Ove wakes up with only shards of embarrassing memories to puzzle over, whenever he's rebuked or rejected, we hold hands and leap with him straight down his ever-present shame spiral. His words are mirrors reflecting back the same complicated feelings we've all experienced ourselves at some point. 

The backdrop of much of this book is the misty, dark winter of Northern Norway which, in a book where perfection is nowhere to be seen, actually reflects the author in such a perfect way. The twenty-four-hour winter darkness mirrors Karl Ove's blackouts. The hanging thick mist, his hangovers. The rushing water, his pulsing, racing heart. The dark, rough edges, the boys; the quiet beauty, the girls. The village of Halfjord is so tiny that whenever Karl Ove leaves his house, it's as if the eyes of the entire village are upon him. We, the readers, are drawn in so close to his world that we feel like one of the neighbours. Karl Ove is the magnet and we are the iron filings that are swept up by him as he walks past us on each page drawing us deeper into his stories and his psyche.

Karl Ove's world is all-encompassing. His life's story is compelling, truthful and laid bare for the world to see. It's honest writing at its purest. It's about the extraordinariness of ordinary life and trying to figure out what it all means. His books are about real moments, human elements, fumbling, tears, laughter, life. Karl Ove is unique unto himself, but at the same time, he is all of us. He's just brave and unfiltered enough to lay it all down on the page.