At the beginning of A Death in the Family– the first volume in Karl Ove Knausgaard’s internationally lauded My Struggle series – a young Karl Ove watches a news report on the mysterious sinking of a fishing smack. “I stare at the surface of the sea without listening to what the reporter says, and suddenly the outline of a face emerges.” It is a momentary vision, one of profound effect; and one to which his first response is to run off to tell somebody about it. It is, perhaps, a microcosm of the project – the vital need to confess his own unique experience and share it, in all its immediacy, with others.
Autumn’s cover, one of several artworks by Vanessa Baird that illustrate its text, seems to echo that incident – her painting of the sea is almost exactly as described by Knausgaard – while also introducing the underlying theme of these 63 short pieces: that of the wonder and impossibility of the natural world.
Such missteps feel part of the wider work, a dropped stitch as much a part of the tapestry as the exquisite needlework
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