Boyhood island by karl ove knausgaard review – the third book in the series is likely to surprise

Whatever your knowledge of Karl Ove Knausgaard's internationally celebrated _My Struggle_ sequence, its third volume is likely to surprise. For those already immersed in Karl Ove's

meticulously rendered life story, _Boyhood Island_ is a departure in structure and purpose. For those yet to read him, it may be a question of wondering what all the fuss is about. It is

testament to the power and immediacy of Knausgaard's writing, however, that both camps are ultimately rewarded with a subtle, burning sense of the lost years of childhood. The previous

novels – _A Death in the Family_, _A Man in Love_ – are direct in approach, but complex in their structure: Knausgaard looking back on his life, framing his experiences with older eyes,

while never forgetting that his past actions belong to another life. This approach is abandoned in _Boyhood Island_ in favour of a straight narrative, told almost entirely chronologically,

through the eyes of a growing child. It's a gambit that initially feels a little lightweight, somewhat obvious. The superreal detailing of life employed in the first two books is

matched by dramatic tension and a sense of an overarching struggle with the self; yet in the opening sections of _Boyhood Island_ this narrative propulsion seems lacking. Without the

breakouts and disjointed chronology, the encyclopaedic exploration of a boy's humdrum life can seem somewhat wearying and meandering. It takes time for the voice to work on the reader,

to suck them into the unguarded thoughts of a boy turning into a youth. While we cycle through the usual tropes of coming-of-age fiction – school, play, parental issues, body worries, sex,

fear – Knausgaard constructs a voice that is both convincing and utterly convinced of its place in the world. This is where the "true" Karl Ove resides, in this arrogant yet

cry-babyish boy, in his devotion to both the physical world of football and swimming, and to the imaginative world of comics and books. Read in context of the sequence as a whole, _Boyhood

Island_ lacks the sheer transformative power of the previous volumes, but delivers a vital piece of Karl Ove's struggle: a struggle to know himself as well as he did as a child. Read in

isolation, it is a striking and cumulatively engrossing addition to the literature of childhood. In both cases, _Boyhood Island_ is a vital, uncompromising, occasionally patience-trying

attempt to resuscitate the ache, frustration and pleasures of growing up. _Boyhood Island is published by Vintage (£8.99). Click here to buy it for £6.99_