RaveThe Monthly (AU)The adult Karl Ove may be a different person to Per Ove and Geir Ove, but over the course of this volume he vanishes entirely into his former selves. Even when the child Karl Ove is at his most absurd – timing a 15-minute first kiss with a stopwatch – there is no authorial wink to the reader. Knausgaard gives himself over entirely to the earnestness of childhood. Irony, after all, breeds distance, and Knausgaard’s objective is proximity ... Throughout Boyhood Island, backdrops are described at length, mined neither for poetry nor symbol ... There is a mesmeric quality to this, and an immersion through detail that resembles virtual reality.
