The second installment of Knausgaard’s semi-Proustian epic takes us to birth of his children and courtship of poet Linda Bostrom. Perhaps with greater control and detail, we are taken through the quotidian movements of young adulthood; at its best, the novel is able to transport us in non-linear directions, the interlocking waves of memory, regret, and longing unfold naturally and often with tremendous skill. And yet I cannot help be bothered by stiffness of his naturalism—this is a thinker of adolescent fantasies of existentialist freedom. His heroes are Hölderlin, Cioran, Jaspars, Hamsun, Dostoevsky. Knausgaard trades in reactionary condemnations: he hates the welfare state, he hates the banality of bourgeois existence, at times he hates women. Impressive as an endurance test, My Struggle Fails to deliver on its promise to uncover the truth of human relations through their focused and deliberate temporalization.
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