And, much as he did in the final volume of his autofiction epic, My Struggle, he concludes with a philosophical longueur, here a contemplation about how myth, religion, and folklore address a porous boundary between life and death. Each character is rendered with a detail-rich but cool, plainspoken register that’s Knausgaard’s trademark. Knausgaard circulates through these characters and a handful more, not to connect them plotwise so much as to achieve a symphonic effect: Everybody is experiencing a sense of both fear and wonder, though some are better at dealing with those emotions than others. A nurse starts helping with an autopsy only to discover the corpse isn’t dead.

Members of a death-metal band are found massacred a boorish, arrogant journalist tries to cover the story while his wife, a caretaker in a prison, tries to locate an escapee. A pastor presides over the funeral of a reclusive man who bears an uncanny resemblance to one she’s recently met. A man despairs of helping his wife, so racked with madness she’s seemingly torn the head off a cat. A star? A sign of a miracle? A distant supernova? Regardless, Knausgaard's cast of characters soon faces domestic disruptions to match the astral one.

Nobody’s sure what to make of the emergence of a new bright light in the sky. A new heavenly body sends the lives of a handful of Norwegians off-kilter.

Karl knausgaard