The School of Night is a novel about a photographer who dreams of success, but when it comes, there's a price to pay. Kristian is a Norwegian student who moves to London to study photography. There, he feels bored and frustrated, getting negative feedback on his work that he doesn't agree with. He meets Hans, a Dutch artist who sees the world differently and is interested in the historical occult, and when something terrible happens, Kristian finds inspiration. However, Kristian's success might not be as stable as it seems.

This is my first Knausgaard novel—I'd always assumed his work wasn't going to be my sort of thing, but the connection this book has with Christopher Marlowe made me want to read it. It is really a novel of two halves, with the first half a story of London in the 1980s, a young photographer who becomes intrigued by Marlowe, a strange new friend, and what happens when the photographer does something terrible. I really liked the first half, with its vivid 1980s London setting and the way that Kristian is shown to be pretentious, often annoying, and focused on his own success over anyone else. There's a lot of narratives running alongside each other and they all play together, in an accessible style and lots of detail (I liked how Kristian kept returning to trying to decide an order for his record collection, for example). I was intrigued how the motifs from Doctor Faustus that the story plays with were going to play out as the book continued.

The second half jumps forward in time. Kristian is now a successful artist with his photographs getting a major exhibition, and he's balancing that with his wife and child. There's a framing narrative at points throughout the whole novel that hints to his current position as he's been narrating the novel, too. I found that the second half didn't quite live up to the promise of the first half, for me. The things I'd liked about the first half—the specificity of detail, the lingering occult—were no longer really present, and maybe a few more flashes of time before reaching the final section would've made it feel more like it was getting across Kristian's rise and readying his fall. The events of the second half, mostly around the same self-centred man now dealing with interviews and arguments with his wife before a final dramatic moment, were less exciting to me and felt more like any novel about an self-obsessed artist.

However, the conclusion to the novel does bring everything back together and I think it works quite powerfully to get across the novel's message. I have to admit that I do find the middle part of Doctor Faustus less interesting as well, so maybe it was inevitable! I also just really enjoyed the 1980s pretentious artsy vibe and how it played into the Marlowe/Faustus side, whereas I'm less interested in the atmosphere of the second half, at least until the ending. Overall, I enjoyed The School of Night and how it engaged with Doctor Faustus to tell a story of ambition and the price of success. Also, it made me realise I should actually read more Knausgaard.

This was my first Knausgaard and I quite liked it. It was gripping and more emotional than I thought it would be. Interested in reading more.

I don't know what to make of School of Night. A very long novel, it spent an inordinate amount of time with the 20 year old Kristian, newly arrived in London from Norway and estranged from his parents.

His father thinks Kristian is a Narcissist. Kristian is convinced he will become a successful photographer, and scathing of those he thinks beneath him. An incident changes his life, and is at the centre of the book.

The mysterious, mercurial Hans flits in and out. Kristian immerses himself in literature, Christopher Marlowe among others, and musing on the divide between life and death and old ideas about a life for a death.

We fast forward a couple of times, once to find Kristian on his own, running away from something; the second time, aged 44, he's a feted photographer lording it at his exhibition in New York and treating people abominably.

The devil is a constant theme and Kristian realises he has met the devil. I lurched between frustration and boredom, particularly with the long treatises on literature (the photography history was more appealing). At other times i read feverishly to learn exactly what happened, with a fear I never would. A 3.5 for me. A novel that will divide opinion.

Kristian moves to London to study photography.
He is not particularly interested in other humans.
He makes friends (?) with Dutch Hans.
His art changes, does he himself change as well?
Will his family life be different than his own?
I enjoy Knausgaard’s writing and the photography and London settings in this one.
Also, Kristian’s dialogues with his family and Hans.
If you like Knausgaard, you will like this one.
If you are new to him, it is a good start.

Best book I have ever read, emotional, gripping, thrilling, devastating, empathetic all over beautifully crafted. From beginning to end and beyond, I'll think about this often.