I start to type a few words while eating the orange. I lay in the sofa again with the laptop on my lap. I start to unwrap each juicy orange bit and put them in a bowl to take with me. The smell of fresh orange juice fills my nostrils with expectation. I reach for the fruit knife from the counter and start to cut the orange peel in equal sized parts. I sit up again and take an orange form the fruit basket which also containes pears, apples, bananas and kiwis. I then start to look at the empty screen and realize I am hungry. I open the lid, punch in the password and click on the Notes application icon.

I sit up, unplug the laptop from the white charger and sit back down. I lay on the beige textile corner sofa thinking that I should start writing my review for A Death In The Family, My Struggle Part 1. Not, my girlfriend, appeared in the doorway.Īre you alright? she said anxiously. I knew I was wasting precious time: I had been sitting there all afternoon, and so far I had not written a word. I felt a sudden connection to the person I had been then, and saw my father, now dead, looking at me as I dragged my spoon through the viscous syrup, stirring it into small waves and curlicues as it gradually diffused into the cooling porridge. Not only that, the color of the shampoo was almost the same as that of the syrup. I visualized the curved font on the label now it occurred to me that exactly the same font had appeared on the tins of golden syrup I had eagerly spooned over my porridge as an eight-year-old. It seemed ridiculous to waste the shampoo.

A small shower of dandruff landed on the keyboard, and I wondered if I ought to change to a different brand of shampoo, but I had recently bought five bottles of Garnier Extra Mild, which were still sitting on the right-hand side of the cupboard under the bathroom sink, just behind a blue and white packet of paper tissues. Now, it was hard to remember how I had experienced that time. I shifted my weight, trying to find a more comfortable position, and scratched my head, using my left hand my right shoulder had still not completely recovered from the skiing accident I had suffered earlier that year, when for a few days I had felt near death. I sat, leaning slightly forward, and continued to stare at the screen, but I could think of nothing to say.

Karl ove knausgaard my struggle book 1