Began: Jan 2026 Finished: Feb 18
My review: I started taking notes almost 300 pages in, so I missed recording many trains of thought. But the book was engrossing, in that specifically mundane Karl Ove kind of way. I wasn't sure where he was taking me - jumping from perspective to perspective is a different mode for him. But by the end, I felt that the pieces had been aligned for something big moving forward. We aren't going to get aliens landing - we're just going to get piles and piles of the most normal life that can be put to a page, mixed with linguistic trickery to make us think we're getting philosophically deep - when what we are truly receiving is more stream of consciousness thought from small minded characters who are out to serve their own ends, create their own little worlds. One feels these characters are headed for the judgment seat, in the great unveiling to come. But I also have a feeling that KO will stop short of such a catharsis.
Katherine
- the mentions of soda in Karl Ove. Someone should write a thesis on soda in KO. Gulping down soda. Lots of gulpers in this novel.
Egil
- this is the doppelganger of Karl Ove. and maybe i shouldn't have been surprised at how much the novel, in the end, centered upon him, and hinged around him.
I am the bright Morning Star, Jesus said.
But in Isaiah the Morning Star was the Devil.
Wasn't that right?
I'd have to check.
p. 377