Daniel Silver in The Point:
When I learned that Knausgaard had published a new novel, The Morning Star, I was perplexed. The final book of My Struggle, The End, brings to termination the whole arc of the series, completing not only the story of Karl Ove’s father’s life and death but also Karl Ove’s own life as the author of that story: “Afterwards we will catch the train to Malmö, where we will get in the car and drive back to our house, and the whole way I will revel in, truly revel in, the thought that I am no longer a writer.”
If Knausgaard had truly exhausted his authorship with The End, how could he write another novel? And at least on some level, it can seem as if he didn’t; there are a number of unmistakable stylistic continuities between The Morning Star and My Struggle. A character loses herself in a reverie about eating Burger King. Another remarks on the limits of Heidegger’s interpretation of Hölderlin. Tarmacs glimmer and the light dances upon trees and water.
Yet the departures are even more striking.
More here.