Karl Ove Knausgaard - Boyhood Island (My Struggle 3)

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Epub ISBN: 9781448155842

Version 1.0

www.randomhouse.co.uk

Published by Harvill Secker 2014

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Copyright Forlaget Oktober 2010

English translation copyright Don Bartlett 2014

Karl Ove Knausgaard has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

First published with the title Min Kamp Tredje bok in 2010 by Forlaget Oktober, Oslo

First published in Great Britain in 2014 by

HARVILL SECKER

Random House

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 9781846557224 (hardback)

ISBN 9781846557231(trade paperback)

Lyrics to Ingen vei tilbake on pp. 443444 The Aller Vrste

Save All Your Kisses For Me on p. 92 Words and Music by Tony Hiller, Lee Sheriden and Martin Lee 1975, Reproduced by permission of EMI Music Publishing Ltd, London W1F 9LD

Getting Better on p. 295 Words and Music by John Lennon and Paul McCartney 1967, Reproduced by permission of Sony/ATV Tunes LLC, London W1F 9LD

Norwegian Wood on p. 374 Words and Music by John Lennon and Paul McCartney 1965, Reproduced by permission of Sony/ATV Tunes LLC, London W1F 9LD

The My Struggle cycle is published with the support of NORLA

Published with the support of the Culture Programme of the European Union

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

Childhood is exhilarating and terrifying. For the young Karl Ove, new houses, classes and friends are met with manic excitement and creeping dread. Adults occupy godlike positions of power, benevolent in the case of his doting mother, tyrannical in the case of his cruel father.

In the now infamously direct style of the My Struggle cycle, Knausgaard describes a time in which victories and defeats are felt keenly and every attempt at self-definition is frustrated. This is a book about family, memory and how we never become quite what we set out to be.

Karl Ove Knausgaards first novel, Out of the World, was the first ever debut novel to win The Norwegian Critics Prize and his second, A Time to Every Purpose Under Heaven, was widely acclaimed. A Death in the Family, the first of the My Struggle cycle of novels, was awarded the prestigious Brage Award. The My Struggle cycle has been heralded as a masterpiece wherever it appears.

Don Bartlett lives in Norfolk and works as a freelance translator of Scandinavian literature. He has translated, or co-translated, a wide variety of Danish and Norwegian novels by such writers as Per Petterson, Lars Saabye Christensen, Roy Jacobsen, Ingvar Ambjrnsen, Jo Nesbo and Ida Jessen.

Also by Karl Ove Knausgaard

A Time to Every Purpose Under Heaven

A Death in the Family: My Struggle Book 1

A Man in Love: My Struggle Book 2

ONE MILD, OVERCAST day in August 1969 a bus came winding its way along a narrow road at the far end of an island in southern Norway, between gardens and rocks, meadows and woods, up and down dale, round sharp bends, sometimes with trees on both sides as if through a tunnel, sometimes with the sea straight ahead. It belonged to the Arendal Steamship Company and was, like all its buses, painted in two-tone light and dark brown livery. It drove over a bridge, along a bay, indicated right and drew to a halt. The door opened and out stepped a little family. The father, a tall slim man in a white shirt and light terylene trousers, was carrying two suitcases. The mother, wearing a beige coat and with a light blue kerchief covering her long hair, was clutching a pram in one hand and holding the hand of a small boy in the other. The oily grey exhaust fumes from the bus hung in the air for a moment as it receded into the distance.

Its quite a way to walk, the father said.

Can you manage, Yngve? the mother said, looking down at the boy, who nodded.

Course I can.

He was four and a half years old and had fair, almost white hair and tanned skin after a long summer in the sun. His brother, barely eight months old, lay in the pram staring up at the sky, oblivious to where they were or where they were going.

Slowly they began to walk uphill. It was a gravel road, covered with puddles of varying sizes after a downpour. There were fields on both sides. At the end of a flat stretch, perhaps some five hundred metres in length, there was a forest which sloped down to pebbled beaches; the trees werent tall, as though they had been flattened by the wind blowing off the sea.

On the right there was a newly built house. Otherwise there were no buildings to be seen. The large springs on the pram creaked. Soon the baby closed his eyes, lulled to sleep by the wonderful rocking motion. The father, who had short dark hair and a thick black beard, put down one suitcase to wipe the sweat from his brow.

My God, its humid, he said.

Yes, she replied. But it might be cooler nearer the sea.

Lets hope so, he said, grabbing the suitcase again.

This altogether ordinary family, with young parents, as indeed almost all parents were in those days, and two children, as indeed almost every family had in those days, had moved from Oslo, where they had lived in Thereses gate close to Bislett Stadium for five years, to the island of Tromya, where a new house was being built for them on an estate. While they were waiting for the house to be completed, they would rent an old property in Hove Holiday Centre. In Oslo he had studied English and Norwegian during the day and worked as a nightwatchman, while she attended Ullevl Nursing College. Even though he hadnt finished the course, he had applied and had been accepted for a middle-school teaching job at Roligheden Skole while she was to work at Kokkeplassen Psychiatric Clinic. They had met in Kristiansand when they were seventeen, she had become pregnant when they were nineteen and they had married when they were twenty, on the Vestland smallholding where she had grown up. No one from his family went to the wedding, and even though he is smiling on all the photos there is an aura of loneliness around him, you can see he doesnt quite belong among all her brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts, male and female cousins.