The Wolves of Eternity
In 1986, twenty-year-old Syvert Løyning returns from the military to his mother’s home in southern Norway. One evening, his dead father comes to him in a dream. Realizing that he doesn’t really know who his father was, Syvert begins to investigate his life and finds clues pointing to the Soviet Union. What he learns changes his past and undermines the entire notion of who he is. But when his mother becomes ill, and he must care for his little brother, Joar, on his own, he no longer has time or space for lofty speculations.
In present-day Russia, Alevtina Kotov, a biologist working at Moscow University, is traveling with her young son to the home of her stepfather, to celebrate his eightieth birthday. As a student, Alevtina was bright, curious and ambitious, asking the big questions about life and human consciousness. But as she approaches middle-age, most of that drive has gone, and she finds herself in a place she doesn’t want to be, without really understanding how she got there. Her stepfather, a musician, raised her as his own daughter, and she was never interested in learning about her biological father; when she finally starts looking into him, she learns that he died many years ago and left two sons, Joar and Syvert.
Years later, when Syvert and Alevtina meet in Moscow, two very different approaches to life emerge. And as a bright star appears in the sky, it illuminates the wonder of human existence and the mysteries that exist beyond our own worldview. Set against the political and cultural backdrop of both the 1980s and the present day, The Wolves of Eternity is an expansive and affecting book about relations—to one another, to nature, to the dead.
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Finished reading: The Wolves of Eternity by Karl Ove Knausgaard 📚
Finished reading: The Wolves of Eternity by Karl Ove Knausgaard 📚
Another deep dive into complex characters, questioning life, love, and family bonds, all with a strange celestial morning star in the heavens.
I did not enjoy this second book of the series as much as the first. But I still enjoyed the immersion into a new world, the deep character development, the smoldering mysteries, and the book’s characters popping up in my head throughout the day. This second book in the series stands on its own, with only the Morning Star appearing at the end tying it to the first.
This style of book is not for everyone; you have to enjoy slow-paced, deep character building. The author’s prose is outstanding, and you will find yourself enjoying each word.
Looking forward to the final book in the series, The Third Realm.
Some favorite highlights:
Now, thirty-five years on, I still haven’t told anyone what I saw that night, or what I did. I know, you see, that I could have saved him if only I’d done the right thing. But I didn’t do the right thing, and he died. No one needs to know. It’s my memory, and mine alone, and unless something unforeseen happens, I’ll take it with me to the grave.
‘Mum, you can’t just get a job these days. It’s 1986.’
The world was outside us, it was something we were in. But seeing it, it became a part of us. So wasn’t the world then inside us? If it was only on the outside and nothing of it got in, everything would just be dark. The same surely applied to hearing and smell and touch. Our senses took what was external and turned it into something internal. If the world couldn’t get inside us, it wouldn’t exist.
‘However much you feed a wolf, it always looks to the forest. We are all wolves of the dense forest of Eternity,’