The Morning Star - Kirjakasa

Hardcover, 688 pages

Published Sept. 28, 2021 by Penguin Press.

ISBN:: 978-0-399-56342-3

(1 review)

It's a normal night in August. Literature professor Arne and artist Tove are with their children at the resort in southern Norway. Their friend, Egil, a driver by day, is staying in a cabin nearby. Kathrine, a priest, is on her way home from a seminar, the journalist Jostein is out on the town, and his wife Turid, who is an assistant nurse, has a night shift.

Above them all, a huge star suddenly appears in the sky. No one, not even the astronomers, knows for sure what kind of phenomenon it is. Is there a star burning itself out? Why then has no one seen it before? Or is it a brand new star? Slowly the interest in the news subsides, and life goes on, but not quite as before, for unusual phenomena begin to occur on the fringes of human existence.

Over these days in August, the characters …

It's a normal night in August. Literature professor Arne and artist Tove are with their children at the resort in southern Norway. Their friend, Egil, a driver by day, is staying in a cabin nearby. Kathrine, a priest, is on her way home from a seminar, the journalist Jostein is out on the town, and his wife Turid, who is an assistant nurse, has a night shift.

Above them all, a huge star suddenly appears in the sky. No one, not even the astronomers, knows for sure what kind of phenomenon it is. Is there a star burning itself out? Why then has no one seen it before? Or is it a brand new star? Slowly the interest in the news subsides, and life goes on, but not quite as before, for unusual phenomena begin to occur on the fringes of human existence.

Over these days in August, the characters the novel follows will each understand what is happening differently, and all face new struggles in their own lives.

6 editions

logan williams reviewed The Morning Star by Karl Ove Knausgård

flawed but satisfying

4 stars

he's a controversial author, but as a work of fiction, i think this one escapes some of the ethical concerns of "my struggle". the writing and characterization is 100% him though, all engaging if samey trainwrecks.

i really loved the middle of the book, and that's where most of the stars come from -- all half-stories half-finished, half-deaths and half-light, half-tied together -- but ultimately only a half-assed attempt at richard powers as the pieces never quite fit. (arguably an artistic choice, but a lazy one for a novel.) and finally, it ends with a tedious and sophomoric "essay on death." okay, diagetically it's written by a washed-up failson wannabe-philosopher, but it's given such an important place in the book that one cannot help but feel it is something knaussgard is saying himself, and it doesn't come across well.

worth it if you like knausgaard's prose and characterization, 4 stars …

he's a controversial author, but as a work of fiction, i think this one escapes some of the ethical concerns of "my struggle". the writing and characterization is 100% him though, all engaging if samey trainwrecks.

i really loved the middle of the book, and that's where most of the stars come from -- all half-stories half-finished, half-deaths and half-light, half-tied together -- but ultimately only a half-assed attempt at richard powers as the pieces never quite fit. (arguably an artistic choice, but a lazy one for a novel.) and finally, it ends with a tedious and sophomoric "essay on death." okay, diagetically it's written by a washed-up failson wannabe-philosopher, but it's given such an important place in the book that one cannot help but feel it is something knaussgard is saying himself, and it doesn't come across well.

worth it if you like knausgaard's prose and characterization, 4 stars mainly for the latter part of "day one."