The story of life in its cyclical evolution of the seasons marks the capricious entrance and exit of the scene of each one. In the past, being born in winter was a challenge for survival. Nowadays it is hardly an apparent anecdote that, given the effort of Karl Ove Knausgård By approaching our essences from the dictates of the sun, it can be much more transcendent than the mere spark that ignites life as a first heartbeat.
In a way, the delay in the arrival of this author's quartet of stations at the bookstores is an unsuspected advantage. Because now we have the entire work to read at once. And yes, like the great perishable loves, which paradoxically are indelibly engraved on us, everything ends in summer.
Thus comes the tremendous end of this ambitious project. The personal encyclopedia format is recovered here, in this case marked by summer, which gives rise to talk about the summer rain and tears, cherry and plum trees, ice cubes and ice creams, crab fishing and the barbecues ... And among those always sagacious and heterodox reflections, entries from an intimate journal of the writer are interspersed. His literary projects and the conflictive relationship with his father during childhood emerge, among other issues, and we are told the story –that the grandfather in turn related to the author– of a woman who lived a forbidden love with an enemy soldier during world war II. And now that the cycle is closing, there is also a reflection on the capacity of literature to explain the world to us.
One of the most original projects in contemporary literature culminates, a writing exercise that explores new dimensions and perspectives, a sincere and overwhelming text that tells us about the meaning of life, the search for happiness, the assumption of pain, of the sometimes terrible beauty of the world, of the commitment of fatherhood and the thrill of being alive.
You can now buy the novel «In summer», by Karl Ove Knausgard, here:
