The grand finale of Karl Ove Knausgaard's masterful and
intensely-personal series about the four seasons, illustrated with
paintings by the great German artist Anselm Kiefer
The conclusion to one of the most extraordinary and original literary
projects in recent years, Summer once again intersperses short vividly
descriptive essays with emotionally-raw diary entries addressed directly
to Knausgaard's newborn daughter. Writing more expansively and, if it is
possible, even more intimately and unguardedly than in the previous
three volumes, he mines with new depth his difficult memories of his
childhood and fraught relationship with his own father. Documenting his
family's life in rural Sweden and reflecting on a characteristically
eclectic array of subjects--mosquitoes, barbeques, cynicism, and skin,
to name just a few--he braids the various threads of the previous
volumes into a moving conclusion. At his most voluminous since My
Struggle, his epic sensational series, Knausgaard writes for his
daughter, striving to make ready and give meaning to a world at once
indifferent and achingly beautiful. In his hands, the overwhelming joys
and insoluble pains of family and parenthood come alive with uncommon
feeling.
