Review 141: My Struggle: Dancing in the Dark

My Struggle: Book 4 - Dancing in the Dark by Karl Ove Knausgård
My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This installment of the series is mostly about Karl Ove's one year teaching, when he was 18 to 19, in Northern Norway. There is some backwards looking, and briefly going forward, but mostly around that time of teaching. It's a very small town where he is teaching. They always have young temporary teachers, people don't seem to stay. Since his age was only a couple years older than some of the students he has attractions, but doesn't act on anything. He does briefly go out with a 16 year old that is going to school in another town close by and his students remark on it. Karl Ove breaks it off quickly, before anything really develops with her.

The book is mostly linear, but there are some points when he goes back in time, and also briefly forward. One part he said years later, maybe eleven, he wrote a novel (his first) about that time as a teacher, most of it was the school, town and the characters. He worried what the people from the town would think. Then two girls came to see him speak, from the town. They had met up at a coffee shop. Karl Ove was nervous, of course, and one was the young girl in the school that he liked, and wrote about. They discussed it briefly and turned out to be okay. Nothing every happened either, by then he was married.

The book is still continuing the relationship with his father. A large part of the digression from the main story line was about the time when his parents split up, his dad started drinking a lot. Karl Ove is drinking a lot in this book as well, and there seem to be similarities that aren't discussed.

I found myself getting a little bored with some of the teenage boyhood desires for a date, for having sex with someone, anyone. It occupied more of the books pages than I wanted to read. I'll still continue on the series, most likely, but it may be some time before I get to the next book. Hopefully not three years like this one took.

Previous books read in series:

• My Struggle: Book 1: Death in the Family 
• read: May.06-24, 2016
• My Struggle: Book 2: A Man in Love 
• read: July.05-Aug.08 2016
• My Struggle: Book 3: Boyhood
• read: May.15-24 2017

All rated 5 stars