Summer
From the Sunday Times Bestselling Author (Seasons Quartet 4)
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
Summer is the fourth volume of the Seasons quartet, a collection of short prose and diaries written by a father for his youngest daughter, with stunning artwork by Anselm Kiefer.
'Knausgaard unearths the mysteries of the commonplace' Observer
In Summer, Karl Ove Knausgaard writes about long days full of sunlight, eating ice cream with his children, lawn sprinklers and ladybirds. He experiments with the beginnings of a novel and keeps a diary in which the small events of his family's life are recorded. Against a canvas of memories, longings, and experiences of art and literature, he searches for the meaning of moments as they pass us by.
'Wondrous... There are blissful glimpses of nature's mystery and balance' Financial Times
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The sights, sounds, and family activities of a Norwegian summer spark Knausgaard's imagination in this expansive, engrossing meditation on everything, the final volume of a series loosely inspired by the seasons. Norwegian novelist Knausgaard (My Struggle) offers 54 short essays about deceptively mundane topics, from lawn sprinklers and cats to ice cream, bicycles, and "repetition," each one opening out from naturalistic observation or scientific lore into grand metaphor. "Ice Cubes," for instance, begins with the "rustling or clinking sound when the glass they are floating around in is moved," and concludes that "motion and heat cannot be preserved, only reborn, only projected ever further, which gives life its hysterical and manic aspect." Interspersed throughout are diary entries that recount domestic minutiae the weather, landscapes, shopping, barbecuing, and the constant chauffeuring of kids before expanding into ruminations on, among other things, Swedish mystic Emanuel Swedenborg, the difference in perspective between adults and children, and a narrative about a Norwegian woman falling in love with a German officer during WWII. Knausgaard's writing is rambling, pensive, and neurotic he's ashamed of his narcissism, and of being ashamed of his narcissism but also ruthlessly frank about himself and endlessly curious about the world. Always intriguing despite its seemingly banal subject, Knausgaard's prose evokes universal themes from intimate specifics.
