“... Something​ very strange happens in the middle of The End, the sixth and last volume of Karl OveKnausgaard’s titanic work of self-description. At around page 482, the book swerves away from scenes of family and social life, and plunges, like a car crashing through a safety barrier, into a prolonged reflection on Adolf Hitler ...”

“... narratives that appear painstakingly to relate the lived experiences of their authors. Karl OveKnausgaard’s My Struggle, the overweight apogee of the form, is grounded in a realism so thoroughgoing and full of circumstantial actuality that we may as well call it ‘punitive realism’. ...”