RaveThe Literary ReviewWhat gives the novel its tension is that the worst part of its disaster always seems about to happen. This overwhelming sense of dread transforms a typical coming-of-age story into a monster movie—or, to put it another way, it shows us that childhood is itself a monster movie ... Form and destruction: the two words run like rails through My Struggle, creating an energy that we see not only in the writing itself, but in the book’s central relationship between the jittery, unformed narrator and his rule-obsessed father ... A book so shot through with emptiness and death that it leaves its readers feeling full and alive. A deeply morbid book, My Struggle is nonetheless as full of life as a boat is of wind or a house is of light.
