Childhood is exhilarating and terrifying. For the young Karl Ove, new houses, classes and friends are met with manic excitement and creeping dread. Adults occupy godlike positions of power, benevolent in the case of his doting mother, tyrannical in the case of his cruel father.Knausgaard describes a time in which victories and defeats are felt keenly and every attempt at self-definition is frustrating. This is a book about family, memory and how we never become quite what we set out to be.