Knausgaard’s five volume My Struggle has been one of the writing/reading world’s major stories over the last several years, but I couldn’t get past the first 50 pages, so I expected not to like this book of very brief, 2-3 page essays written to his fourth child, still in utero. I was wrong. These are finely etched, vividly wrought works, surprising the reader at each turn with unpredictable associations, e.g. one sequence in “November” has essays on telephones, vomit, flies, forgiveness, and buttons: Go figure. In one of three letters to his unborn daughter, Knausgaard writes,” I want to show you the world, as it is, all around us, all the time. Only by doing so will I myself be able to glimpse it….You will come to see it in your own way, you will experience things for yourself and live a life of your own, so of course it is primarily for my own sake that I am doing this: showing you the world, little one, makes my life worth living.” That’s a fitting summary of what he’s up to here. I look forward to the coming seasons!