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A Time To Every Purpose Under Heaven (2004)

by Karl Ove Knausgård(Favorite Author)

4.07 of 5 Votes: 5

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

Portobello Books

review 1: A very ambitious novel - not all the parts are completely successful nor is it entirely coherent as a whole, but a stimulating attempt to do something very different to the usual novel. The key framing device is a treatise on angels written by a (fictional) 16th Century Italian, Antonius Bellori. Aged 11 he encounters two of them, and what he experiences is so different from what he would have expected, that he dedicates the rest of the life to studying angels. His treatise involves a fundamental re-think of angels, based on a detailed re-examination of the references in conventional and apocryphal scriptures, as well as their post-scriptural manifestations as documented in literature, history and art. Bellori's key assertion is that the divine is not immutable and an... moregels have changed both their physical nature and their interaction with humans significantly over time, as indeed has God. Once that is accepted, as well as treating Old Testament stories as representing physical reality and valid in it's own right, rather than merely foreshadowing Christ, then a complete re-imagining follows. However, what are reading is not Bellori's work, but rather a commentary on it, and on his life, from the narrator. And during this commentary, we also get a detailed expansion of some key biblical stories where angels play a role - in particular, the story of Cain and Abel, the Flood and the tale of Lot and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. The first two in particular are actually more like novellas embedded within the main book - running to 100 and 200 pages respectively - and the role of the angels is relatively limited. The book's Cain and Abel, other than sharing a name - and an ultimate fate - seem to have little overlap with the biblical characters and the story seems set in a world more like the American wild-west than pre-historical times, with a world of bridges, furnished houses, even guns in Noah's time. As I was reading this section, these anachronisms rather grated - they seemed either clumsy or worse a rather simple attempt at post-modernism. However Knausgaard/the narrator does later neatly justify them, by reference to the Flood which destroyed and reshaped the world completely, and was designed to wipe out the traces of angels' influence on human life (based on the Genesis 6 verses that tell of angels inter-breeding with humans): "Apart from their carnal lust, these angels also brought their knowledge to mankind, knowledge about everything from medicine, mining and weaponry to astronomy, astrology and alchemy, according to the Book of Enoch. Furthermore, it is quite obvious that the angels' activities were the direct cause of the great flood". But why does no trace of this more advanced pre-diluvian society remain in the written record? According to the book: "As each new age is convinced that it constitutes what is normal....the people of the new age soon began to imagine the people of the previous one as an exact replica of themselves, in exactly the same setting. Thus Cain and Abel became nomad-like figures who lived and operated in a flat, burning-hot, sand-filled world of olive and fig trees, oases, camels..." On to New Testament times, and Bellori imputes massive significance into the absence of angels between their appearance at Jesus's birth announcement and his resurrection - his conclusion is that it "could be that they were shaken to their core....now [God] had flaunted the greatest prohibition of them all" - the incarnation was God doing what angels had been condemned for thousand of years earlier and which had caused the Flood. Bellori makes an even more radical conclusion at the end of his life - and one which is evidenced only by a 14th Century frescoes rather than a contemporary source - that God himself died permanently on the cross, and angels are now trapped on earth. And this highlights one oddity of the book. Many of the theories expounded by Bellori / the narrator are carefully researched and plausibly evidenced, ultimately by Knausgaard as the author of the book we're reading, but others (such as in the paragraph above) rely on some rather heroic leaps of logic or highly selective readings of the evidence. Knausgaard seems to rely on the device of his fictional narrator reporting that "according to Bellini" to doubly distance himself from the weaknesses of his own arguments. A rather rapid section then explains the story of angels after Bellori's death and has them becoming first the baby-like cherubs of 17th Century art and then, ultimately, a new species of seagulls in Sweden! That's not quite as far-fetched as it sounds given the logic of Bellori's theories, but seems designed mainly to provide a bridge to the final section. The book makes a very sudden shift in the last 50 pages, when the book's narrator who, for the first 470 pages has been anonymous and in the background, suddenly takes centre stage and narrates his own story in coastal Sweden, the only explicit link to the rest of the book being the frequent appearance of seagulls (and the narrator's father brief explanation to him of their origin as angels). This last part provides an intriguing link, both thematically and stylistically, to Knausgaard's more recent fictional-autobiographical "My Struggle" series of books, in particular the first "Death in the Family" based around his father's death. My Struggle is known for the hyper-detailed descriptions of real-life, the un-adorned text written very quickly and without revision, and the unflinchingly, perhaps overly, honest character portraits of Knausgaard and his family and friends. There is a massive contrast to the first 470 pages of "A Time..." with his heavily researched, highly imaginative and poetic story. In the last section, the narrator, now named, is clearly not Knausgaard but the themes are similar. Reference is made to his father's violent and possibly self-inflicted death and to a shameful action of the narrator, but no details are given of either, together with a painful self-harming episode. And the prose becomes as detailed (when the narrator answers a phone call from his mother, we get two paragraphs of things like how many times it rang and where he gets the best reception), if not as deliberately flat, as My Struggle. Overall - a very worthwhile read, and particularly recommended to Knausgaard fans as the sheer contrast adds to the appreciation of his later works.
review 2: Geweldig boek, zeker als je net zoals ik een fan en kenner bent van de bijbel - onmogelijk hieraan te ontsnappen als je opgroeit in een klein katholiek Limburgs dorp in de jaren '80.Volstrekt unieke interpretatie van het oude testament, waarin enkele van de beste verhalen (de broedermoord, de zondvloed) op een aparte en zeer gedetailleerde manier worden verteld, vanuit een originele invalshoek die, als je als lezer even meegaat erin, totaal logisch lijkt. Rode draad door het boek is de studie naar het bestaan en de fysionomie van engelen; ook dit is zo meeslepend en gedetailleerd en geloofwaardig geschreven, dat ik voor de zekerheid toch eens opgezocht heb of deze Bellori niet echt een 16de eeuwse geschiedkundige was. Nee dus...Alleen het einde werkte niet voor mij, toen we eindelijk de verteller van het verhaal leerden kennen. Niet echt een personage met meerwaarde voor mij. less

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