Literary Review
Bored games
The School of Night
Karl Ove Knausgaard (Harvill, £25)
DEAR oh dear, those Knausgaard anti-heroes – was there ever anything quite like them in fiction before? So unrepentantly charmless are they and so eye-wateringly self-absorbed that “anti-hero” is not really the mot juste. Ranked against this procession of A-grade bores and egomaniacs, Anthony Powell’s Kenneth Widmerpool looks like a model of punctilious courtesy and the quiet charm of Martin Amis’s Keith Talent shines out from the pages of London Fields like a beacon on a winter’s night.
Seeing off some pretty stiff competition along the way, The School of Night’s Kristian Hadeland is easily the most appalling protagonist whose neuroses and malignity Karl Ove has so far brought to the printed page. Make that 501 printed pages – as this, like everything else Mr K has put his name to in the past decade and a half, is by no means a short book. One of its key moments comes on page 75 when aspiring lensman Kristian, back home in mid-1980s Norway for Christmas from his London photography course, overhears his father offering a few choice remarks about his son’s personality.
“I could have done without Kristian being here,” Mr Hadelund observes to his wife of a household laid low by their drug-addled daughter’s overdose. “He’s like a black hole. Sucks all the energy out of the place… He’s a narcissist through and through.” None of this will be exactly news to the reader, but eavesdropping Kristian is mortally offended, sets off back to London in a huff, disconnects the phone and doubles down on his efforts to make a success of his career. Naturally, he has a thing about death and his initial efforts are focused on boiling down a dead cat stolen from a veterinary surgery so he can photograph the bones.