The Morning Star

Category: Book
By (author): Knausgaard, Karl Ove
Subject:  FICTION / General
  FICTION / Literary
  FICTION / Occult & Supernatural
  FICTION / Visionary & Metaphysical
Publisher: Knopf Canada
Published: September 2022
Format: Book-paperback
Pages: 688
Size: 8.45in x 5.45in x 1.40in
Our Price:
$ 28.00
Availability:
In stock

Additional Notes

From The Publisher*A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK * ONE OF NPR'S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR

"Knausgaard is among the finest writers alive." -Dwight Garner, New York Times
 
The Morning Star is an astonishing, ambitious, and rich novel about what we don't understand, and our attempts to make sense of our world nonetheless.

One long night in August, Arne and Tove are staying with their children in their summer house in southern Norway. Their friend Egil has his own place nearby. Kathrine, a priest, is flying home from a Bible seminar, questioning her marriage. Journalist Jostein is out drinking for the night, while his wife, Turid, a nurse at a psychiatric care unit, is on a nightshift when one of her patients escapes. 
 
Above them all, a huge star suddenly appears blazing in the sky. It brings with it a mysterious sense of foreboding.
 
Strange things start to happen as nine lives come together under the star. Hundreds of crabs amass on the road as Arne drives at night; Jostein receives a call about a death metal band found brutally murdered in a Satanic ritual; Kathrine conducts a funeral service for a man she met at the airport-but is he actually dead? 
Review Quote*PRAISE FOR THE MORNING STAR

"[The Morning Star] made me feel as though I were drifting through a nearby galaxy, randomly encountering and re-encountering certain celestial beings, before being released, with a disembodied whoosh, into metaphysical deep space. . . . [F]luidly engaging. . . .  Knausgaard's sentences . . . are both plainly direct and lyrically, emotionally elevated. The present is lived to its sometimes transportive, sometimes meaningless fullest." -Heidi Julavits, The New York Times
"In his first work of fiction since the six volumes of My Struggle, Knausgaard trades his bracingly autobiographical mode for a ravishing form of theologically infused fabulism. A mysterious celestial body appears in the late-August sky, accompanied by Biblical omens, hallucinations, and increasingly uncanny events in the natural world. Tracing the lives of nine interconnected characters, Knausgaard sets these enigmatic phenomena against the minutiae of everyday life. This combination of the universal and the intimate enables the novel to approach weighty subjects-death and dying, belief and despair-with both the thrust of a suspense narrative and the depth of a philosophical inquiry." -The New Yorker

"[Knausgaard] reveals himself to be a surprise master of the uncanny . . . The storytelling gift that kept readers enthralled by My Struggle remains powerful. Like Stephen King, another inspiration here, Knausgaard stays shoulder-close to his characters, his paragraphs mimicking the erratic interleaving of their thoughts . . . This is a thoughtful, highly readable novel, packed with ideas and exciting flourishes." -Charles Arrowsmith, Los Angeles Times

"[Knausgaard's] imagination functions perfectly. . . . Just as we begin to wonder where he is taking us, whether he is capable, he gets us there. Actually he does what we might never have expected of Knausgaard: he carries us into a Land, like a part-animal or genderless guide." -Patricia Lockwood, London Review of Books

"Admirers of the six-book My Struggle series . . . will want to know: Does The Morning Star cast the same sort of spell those novels did? The answer . . . is yes. Knausgaard retains the ability to lock you, as if in a tractor beam, into his storytelling. He takes the mundane stuff of life . . . and essentializes them. About the details of daily existence, he manages to be, without ladling on lyricism, twice as absorbent as most of the other leading brands. . . . Knausgaard is among the finest writers alive." -Dwight Garner, The New York Times

"[A] dark and enthralling story. . . .  Knausgaard wheels wildly and successfully through. . . . His focus on the beauty and terror of the mundane will resonate with fans . . . as they traverse this marvelous, hectic terrain. For the author, it's a marvelous new leap."-Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"[The Morning Star] achieve[s] a symphonic effect: Everybody is experiencing a sense of both fear and wonder. . . . Each character is rendered with a detail-rich but cool, plainspoken register that's Knausgaard's trademark. . . . A sui generis metaphysical yarn, engrossing in its particulars." -Kirkus Reviews

"Reconciling his flair for page-turning fiction with the high-concept, intertextual prose that made his name . . . here, he has arguably produced a masterpiece, heavenly and diabolical in equal measure." -i (UK)

"I read The Morning Star compulsively, and stayed awake all night after finishing it. I left the novel feeling as I often did after watching a great scary movie as a kid-totally convinced that whatever evil, implausible thing I had just witnessed on the screen awaited me in the next room. . . . The discursive sprawl of the story is trussed up by the matrix of interpersonal connections, giving it form even as the characters rationalize away how spooked they feel by the events that unfold across the two strange days. . . . The Morning Star hangs over you while shining its strange light." -Brandon Taylor, The New Yorker

"Without quite turning into Stephen King, Knausgaard has managed a page-turner that's recognizably his own. The true sign of the master's touch: he writes too much but always leaves you wanting more." -Christian Lorentzen, Air Mail

"Knausgaard's first traditional novel since the 2008 translation of A Time for Everything offers a dark and enthralling story of the appearance of a new star . . . Knausgaard wheels wildly and successfully through various forms. His focus on the beauty and terror of the mundane will resonate with fans of My Struggle . . . For the author it's a marvelous new leap." -Publishers Weekly (starred)

"Readers hungry for more of [Knausgaard's] immersive storytelling will burn through this tome." -Booklist
Biographical NoteKARL OVE KNAUSGAARD's first novel, Out of the World, was the first ever debut novel to win The Norwegian Critics' Prize and his second, A Time to Every Purpose Under Heaven, was widely acclaimed. A Death in the Family, the first of the My Struggle cycle of novels, was awarded the prestigious Brage Award. The My Struggle cycle has been heralded as a masterpiece wherever it appears. He lives in London, England.