jakewelch • read

08/20/2024 – 10/08/2024 – My Struggle Book 1 was one of my favorite books of all time, and my second favorite this year. But book 2 was an absolute slog. There’s a lot of things I think factored into this. One, the main idea of this book is to focus on his relationship with his wife and his experiences becoming a father. It also revolves a lot around his friend Geir and their various conversations, as well as other adult friendships and conversations. I think I would have liked it more had I read this during a similar time of life, but his frustrations with fatherhood did not land well with me. Furthermore, reading about his strained day-to-day relationship with his wife Linda was very difficult for me. Honestly it felt like it heightened my own daily anxieties and dragged me down with him. Regarding Geir, I just do not like the guy. He’s arrogant, pessimistic and an asshole. He rants like a know-it-all and unfortunately, his rants took up a lot of real estate in this novel. It’s also boring to keep up with the constant exposition-less references and theories to other writings mentioned by the two. You just have to know to know. There were highlights, namely the face-cutting sequence and the portions of discovering his MIL is a secret alcoholic, but I eventually had to skim the last 100 pages after “struggling” with the book for over a month and a half. I still have a desire to read the other books (maybe next year sometime) because they go back and deal with his earlier life again, but I hesitate to recommend book 2 to anyone. I’d give it a 2.5/5 stars, so a weak 3/5.