RaveThe New York Times Book ReviewThose of us who have fallen under Knausgaard’s spell and have signed on for the project are now rewarded with Book 4, the fleetest, funniest and, in keeping with its adolescent protagonist, most sophomoric of the volumes translated into English thus far ... There are no chapter breaks to mark these time shifts, in keeping with the novel’s replication of the flow of memory. There is, however, a plot. Book 4 is a quest novel ... His misfires become a comic motif in the novel, though the laughs are never cheap because each instance is suffused with an intensity of feeling and a disarming, highly sympathetic honesty ... Book 4 is also the airiest book in the series. The pages are rarely dense with text. The essayistic passages that elevate the earlier volumes, bold in their old-fashioned European profundity and full of keen, original, brilliantly associative thinking, are nowhere to be found. Everything here is dramatized, scene after scene, compellingly so but without the gravitas of the earlier books and suggestive of a lighter, more carefree period in Knausgaard’s life.
John Banville
MixedThe New York Times Book ReviewMrs. Osmond begins with the knowledge that Isabel’s marriage has been a mistake. Much of the action consists of her going here and there, meeting various characters and telling them about it. When the book’s climax finally does come, Isabel manages to extricate herself from her past in a relatively simple fashion. This has the curious effect of making one wonder if her plight in the first book was really all that dire, and whether one’s sympathy for her was misplaced. From this perspective, oddly enough, Banville’s homage reduces the object it venerates ... Stylistically, Mrs. Osmond is a triumph that contains the seeds of its own undoing. Banville’s ability to channel James’s style and prose rhythms is astonishing. I can’t imagine anyone who could have done it better. He knows the period, places and society of which he speaks ... This is the difficulty embedded within Banville’s project. There’s something fanatical about it. And no matter what, he’s in a bind. The pace of the novel isn’t exactly swift. And the more longueurs Banville provides in order to reinforce the Jamesian mood and manner, the more tedious the novel becomes. It’s easy to forgive James for keeping to a pace as ruminative and slow as the age he lived in; with Banville, it feels willful to the point of perversity. And yet, without these longueurs, there would be a reduction in fidelity to the original. It’s a no-win situation. The 'better' the book is, the worse it is.
