"The Third Realm is quite different from the first two books in Knausgard's Morning Star series, even though the characters come from the earlier novels. With breathtaking confidence, Knausgard mirrors the first book, The Morning Star, giving us other, richer perspectives on the material. The book opens and closes with Tove, the manic-depressive wife of the jaded academic Arne. And her mix of despair and insight, humour and visionary brilliance turns out to be what these novels need most."
"Hell isn't the psychosis. Hell is leaving the psychosis, she observes, awakening from the manic episode she entered in The Morning Star. Scenes from that book are then enacted from her perspective. The result is an exemplary masterclass in what fiction can offer: the expansion of readerly sympathies, bringing a sense that there are potentially endless perspectives available. Into this is thrown the possibility that there really are incarnated devils wandering the land."
The Third Realm reworks earlier Morning Star material by presenting events from Tove's manic-depressive perspective, offering richer and alternative viewpoints. The narrative opens and closes with Tove, whose blend of despair, humour and visionary brilliance shapes the novel's emotional core. Tove interprets psychosis as less about torment than about the difficulty of leaving it, and scenes from earlier work are reenacted through her experience. The story introduces the unsettling possibility of incarnated devils and a gruesome murder of black-metal musicians, with supernatural communication occurring mainly with the already psychotic. The novel invites broader imaginative sympathy and challenges perceptions of sanity.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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