The Morning Star

By: Karl Ove Knausgaard

Narrated by: Alyssa Bresnahan, Edoardo Ballerini, Elisabeth Rodgers, Graham Winton, Hannah Cabell, Leah Horowitz, Mia Barron, Michael Braun, Michael Crouch

Length: 23 hrs and 11 mins

Publisher's summary

A major new work from the author of the renowned My Struggle series, 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.

It's a normal night in August. Literature professor Arne and artist Tove are with their children at the resort in Sørlandet. Their friend, Egil, a driver by day, is staying in a cabin nearby. Kathrine, a priest, is on her way home from a seminar; the journalist Jostein is out on the town; and his wife, Turid, who is an assistant nurse, has a night shift. Above them all, a huge star suddenly appears in the sky. No one, not even the astronomers, knows for sure what kind of phenomenon it is. Is there a star burning itself out? Why then has no one seen it before? Or is it a brand new star? Slowly the interest in the news subsides, and life goes on, but not quite as before, for unusual phenomena begin to occur on the fringes of human existence. Over these days in August, the characters the novel follows will each understand what is happening differently, and all face new struggles in their own lives.

The Morning Star is a novel about what we do not understand, about great drama seen through the limited lens of little lives. But first and foremost, it is a novel about what happens when the dark forces in the world are set free.

©2020 Karl Ove Knausgaard (P)2021 Recorded Books

Author has remarkable ability to adopt and inhabit viewpoint of a wide range of people

It almost felt like a new genre - it’s not sci fi, it’s not horror, or fantasy but draws on all three - with a dose of history and spirituality. Yet feels current.

Started in one direction, ended in another

This book went in several different directions prior to the rambling ending. I hadn’t read anything about it before starting the audio book so I assumed it was a sort of alternate reality thriller that would all wrap up at the end. I can’t say much more without giving too much away, but my assumption was partly correct and the end left a lot to the imagination. The end also dragged out in a long essay that explained everything at too high a level to be satisfying to most readers who had made it that far.

Great atmosphere. Well drawn characters. Much more than the usual attention to flora and fauna and the difficulty of crashing through the Norwegian woods.

Great read for religious scholars

The human condition, I get it. Death is impending, yes. But still…

Perhaps I was mistaken but I thought this was a fictional book about new star and its ramifications. Instead I was faced with a combination of Bible study and a treatise on death, at a snail’s pace.

The writing is good - even if there were some weird translations it seemed - but the storyline ends up falling apart and it becomes a somewhat dry thesis on death etc.

And don’t even get me started on the ending…

please be over

I didn't need my brain to have to work so hard. ughhh. Couldn't finish.

He said, she said

I really love this book. The only thing that bothered me was the constant “she said” “he said” after every sentence uttered by a character.

Inscrutable and Compulsively Readable

Nietzsche meets Satre meets Dante meets Stephen King.
Thought provoking in a world of competition between the science and the spirit.

Abandoned at chapter 20

Story is boring, narrator is a monotone drone, and characters are flat. Stephen King wannabe.

Emotional, meandering and (dis)comforting

This was a great listen. The 9 different narrators did an excellent job altogether.

Knausgård has said that he was inspired by Twin Peaks and he’s wasn’t lying. The narrative is subtly embellished with quite some Lynchian strangeness that seeps out of the cracks of everyday life.

My only criticism is related to the novel’s focus on death, philosophy and religion. It’s not a problem as it fits the narrative, but some of the parts felt almost like Knausgård was giving me a lecture. It was interesting enough, but it could have been show, don’t tell.

I’m excited to continue with “The Wolves from the Forest of Eternity”, whenever that one might be translated.

Wonderful!

Knausgaard is a brilliant writer. I’ve read most of his works but this is his first fiction piece that I’ve read. The way he captures detail transports me completely to his settings. This story was frightening, heartbreaking and beautiful all at once.

what was the point?

25 hours for what?

A few of the characters I could care about but others? Who cares?

Basically life sucks then you die.