u/TheDeadReader_

This was my first Karl Ove Knausgaard book as I've never really heard of his name before or knew any of his other books, but this was recommended to me by a fellow reader who told me about The School of Night. And I'll say I'm pretty impressed and enjoyed this book quite a bit even though it was a bit different than I was originally expecting.

The School of Night is narrated by a fictional failed Norwegian photographer (Kristian Hadeland) who wrote his long, dark, cynical, and egotistic manuscript of how his life came to where it ended, in a cabin on a remote island where no one, but a few locals knew where he was. He essentially wrote a five-hundred-page suicide note about how his life will come to an end after he's finished writing his perspective of the events. Which starts and end in London (1986-current times) where he meets strange, eccentric, and artistic figures who play a mysterious and supernatural role in giving him what he wants in life, but at a price greater than the narrator was expecting or didn't care to realize till it was too late.

What caught me off guard were the mystery elements that were at play throughout most of the novel. I was expecting a more straight-forward supernatural tale, but there was a lot of questions raised and events that occurred that had me thinking and questioning how things will play out more often than not., But in a good way, as the plot of the narrative was compelling to keep pushing through the unpleasant and downright psychopathic narration of the protagonist. I think it's a good sign of an author like Knausgaard's writing/prose to keep me engaged with wanting to keep reading the work even though I hated the protagonist and his repetitive whining about people, countries, art, and really anything he found himself superior and above. A compelling but very annoying main character overall. Which, in my opinion, worked for this type of darker gothic style novel but may not work for everyone.

This book I believe is the fourth in a series of books that follow a similar thread of dark supernatural tales that follow characters throughout their lives. But even though I haven't read the earlier books, I didn't feel lost and it felt like a complete novel on its own merits. I would like to try out the other books in the series down the line or really anything else that Karl Ove Knausgaard has written as I really ended up enjoying his writing style and prose quite a bit. Though this was a translated work, the English didn't feel clunky and all flowed pretty nicely throughout.