Author(s): Linda Boström Knausgård

Literature | Sweden | Novel

From 2013 to 2017, Linda Boström Knausgård was periodically interned in a psychiatric ward where she was subjected to electroconvulsive therapy. As the treatments at this “factory” progressed, the writer’s memories began to disappear. What good is a writer without her memory?This book, based on the author’s experiences, is an eloquent and profound attempt to hold on to the past, to create a story, to make sense, and to keep alive ties to family, friends, and even oneself. Moments from childhood, youth, marriage, parenting, and divorce flicker across the pages of October Child. This is the story of one woman’s struggle against mental illness and isolation. It is a raw testimony of how writing can preserve and heal.

Review:

Praise for October Child

"October Child is stunningly frank and urgently told. Linda Bostroem Knausgard writes with what appears to be a willingness to expose herself utterly. This makes for a painful and powerful book that asks complicated questions of its readers and acknowledges the impossibility of simple answers. An extraordinary work." --CHRIS POWER, author of Mothers: Stories

"(Bostroem Knausgard's) first openly autobiographical book becomes an act of self-examination powerful enough to match if not surpass those of her ex-husband's." --The Guardian

"October Child is a bold book, not in its openness but in its aloofness, in its faithfulness to literature and language rather than to reason and science. Against the great story of psychiatry with its simple, ready-made answers, Bostroem Knausgard insists on the irrationality in humans and on the suffering of each individual." --Gothenburg Post

"Linda Bostroem Knausgard's October Child took my breath away. I can't recall when I last read a novel that struck me and held me fast in this manner." --Expressen

"October Child is a desperate reckoning with psychiatric care. But it is also an ingeniously composed novel with mercilessly beautiful language." --Sydsvenskan

"As expected, language that is self-assured and lyrical, yet in an unexpectedly acute and polemical tale."--Kulturnytt P1

"Linda Bostroem Knausgard's prose moves seamlessly and evocatively between worlds. She writes as if in a dream--it's both eerie and gripping." --Aftonbladet

"Linda Bostroem Knausgard writes with her usual linguistic momentum, there's a kind of inviting energy in her voice. She balances her desperation with poetic precision and makes the urgency real for the reader." --Svenska Dagbladet

"Linda Bostroem Knausgard has the rare ability to place herself at the very center of emotions and make the past seem completely present." --Goeteborgs-posten

"Linda Bostroem Knausgard creates images and scenes with a vibrant presence and her language often takes lovely poetic turns." --Dagens Nyheter

"Intense and painful." --Joenkoepings-Posten

"Linda Bostroem Knausgard's language is like water: occasionally it pours, sometimes it solidifies to ice. As a reader, I am frozen in her despair." --Boras Tidning

"In a turmoil of the darkest emotions, one marvels at the clarity of the prose. Throughout her internment, the author asks herself a question: Will I be able to write again? Do I have what it takes? The simple and quick answer to that question is, Yes." --OEstersund Post

"A bloodcurdling memorial work, as if secretly written from a bedside. It is a difficult read, painful because it is at once so insightful and despairing, so hopeless, and written with a frightening anger that spares no one, least of all the narrator. It is less literary than Bostroems Knausgard's previous work; and perhaps precisely because of this, in its vulnerable non-perfection, it is so overwhelming. One cannot forget it." --SVT Nyheten

Praise for Welcome to America

"A piercing story of a girl who responds to trauma by mustering the most powerful weapon available to her: silence. (...) melodic, mythological, transformative, a testament to literature's powers..." --Vanity Fair

"...a taut portrait of how difficult it can be to reconcile ideals about faith and family with their messier realities. An intense, recursive book that evokes the chill despair of a Bergman film." --Kirkus Reviews

"The narrative is borderline stream-of-consciousness, with hallucinations mingling with reality, forcing readers to constantly question what they are told. Knausgard is an impressive writer, and she has created a unique, powerful lead in a world all her own." --Publishers Weekly

"In striking prose, Knausgard examines the power of silence and the complicated reality of family. A singular and thought-provoking story with a child narrator you won't soon forget. I look forward to Knausgard's next book!" --Bookriot