My Struggle: Book 4

by Karl Ove Knausgård

He was only sixteen but already the tallest person in the village. His height was so conspicuous that he probably never thought about anything else. Seeing him beside the three seventh-grade girls was painful, anything that was small and delicate caused him difficulty: letters, numbers, conversation, ball games, girls. In most ways he was a child, he burst into loud guffaws at the most basic, the most stupid things, blushed to the roots when he was corrected, and only really felt at ease with Stian, who controlled him as you would a dog. He had lost his father when he was small, and on the few occasions he had come to talk to me that had been the topic. It had all happened in the 1970s, a fishing boat sank without a trace, the whole of Norway talked about it for some days, but then it faded into oblivion except for Ivar, his mother, and the rest of the family. Barely a year after the accident they had moved up to Håfjord, where his mother had relatives. That was his story, his fate, the father who died when he was small.