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    A Time for Everything
    A Time for Everything
    A Time for Everything
    Audiobook20 hours

    A Time for Everything

    Written by Karl Ove Knausgaard

    Narrated by Edoardo Ballerini

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    In the sixteenth century, Antinous Bellori, a boy of eleven, is lost in a dark forest and stumbles upon two glowing beings, one carrying a spear, the other a flaming torch . This event is decisive in Bellori's life, and he thereafter devotes himself to the pursuit and study of angels, the intermediaries of the divine. Beginning in the Garden of Eden and soaring through to the present, A Time for Everything reimagines pivotal encounters between humans and angels: the glow of the cherubim watching over Eden; the profound love between Cain and Abel despite their differences; Lot's shame in Sodom; Noah's isolation before the flood; Ezekiel tied to his bed, prophesying ferociously; the death of Christ; and the emergence of sensual, mischievous cherubs in the seventeenth century. Alighting upon these dramatic scenes - from the Bible and beyond - Knausgaard's imagination takes flight: the result is a dazzling display of storytelling at its majestic, spellbinding best. Incorporating and challenging tradition, legend, and the Apocrypha, these penetrating glimpses hazard chilling questions: can the nature of the divine undergo change, and can the immortal perish?
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateDec 11, 2015
    ISBN9781490650036
    A Time for Everything
    Author

    Karl Ove Knausgaard

    Karl Ove Knausgaard was born in Norway in 1968. My Struggle has won countless international literary awards and has been translated into at least fifteen languages. Knausgaard lives in Sweden with his wife and four children.

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    Reviews for A Time for Everything

    4/5

    51 ratings6 reviews

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    • 5/5
      I loved the way the author creates a deep sense of the emotions involved by detailed description of everyday life. I would never have thought that it would work with Biblical tales ! But it did. I even cried while hearing the Cain and Abel story. Also the narrator does an outstanding job
    • 4/5
      An intensely weird yet memorable book. I didnt get all of it. As a person with an interest in the Bible, I was intrigued to read this as it dealt with the nephilim or fallen angels of Noah's day.The whole narrative starts with a fictional 16th century Italian who sees two angels while out walking. Forget harps and haloes..."Their faces are white and skull-like, their eye sockets deep, cheekbones high, lips bloodless. They have long fair hair, thin necks, slender wrists, claw-like fingers. And theyre shaking. One of them has hands that shake. Just then the other one tilts its head back, opens its mouth and lets out a scream. Wils and lamenting, it reverberates up the walls of the ravine. No human being is meant to hear that cry. An angel's depair is unbearable and almost crushed by terror and compassion."Fast forward on to passages on the Bible and other writings...and then on to re-imaginings of OT sories featuring angels. Don't expect historical accuracy; Knausgaard portrays these early characters as living in a place more reminiscent of a fairly modern Norwegian village, the men in trousers, black suits, the houses featuring window panes...and who makes up the small village where Cain and Abel are dwelling with their parents??I was beguiled by the lovely thought of Adam after the Fall living close to Eden and seeing the distant glow in the sky of the seraphim guarding the Tree of Life.... Cain - a curmudgeonly misfit- is rather more sympathetic than the seriously odd golden boy Abel...And then on to Noah...and here the story is mainly that of his sister. A pleasant enough middle aged woman living a few miles away with her family, they observe the endless rainy weather, and make their way to higher ground as rivers burst their banks and buildings get submerged. Again, Noah is a strange unknowable recluse. As the Ark takes float and some of the remaining human try to climb aboard, we have the image of one of Noah's sons bringing down a cudgel on their heads to prevent them....And on to Ezekiel's angelic vision...more ponderings on religion...more of the story of our Italian angel hunter....And a strange final section that seemed unrelated to the rest. Here a modern day Norwegian man- he seems similar to the troubled hero of his later autobiographical "My Struggle"- gives into self-harming and contemplates the seagulls being evolved angels....It's really hard to give a conclusion. It's like nothing I've ever readn, it's full of pretty implausible (but who knows?) takes on the Scriptures. Theres a lot of quite erudite musings on the nature of angelic beings. It's magical and horrible...and it's an absolute one-off.
    • 5/5
      This is the best novel i ever remember reading. It brings back my feeling that reading is the best most profound drug ever.
    • 4/5
      Several distinct stories come together, not always in ways that are clear, within the covers of the work described by Ingrid Rowland in the New York Review of Books as "strange, uneven, and marvelous" which is best taken with no value judgement implied in any of those words. The fictional Italian boy Antinous Bellori begins and ends the novel proper as subject of an anonymous narrative describing his happening upon two angels in the woods -- they were fishing with a spear in a river -- and his subsequent, though delayed, long quest to see one again. In between several Bible stories are retold in a seemingly Nordic setting; the one about Noah and the implications of he and his wife and sons and their wives alone escaping destruction in the great flood has many long passages requiring patience, followed by a stunning conclusion.

      Appended to the stories of Bellori and those from the Bible is an account of a self-exiled, very unhappy young man. The relationship of this coda to the rest of the work is something to ponder; Ingrid Rowland's review is not to be read before the book itself, but is fascinating afterwards. The title in UK editions is more Biblical: A Time to Every Purpose Under Heaven: A Novel of the Nature of Angels and the Ways of Man, so nothing above should give anything away; those who brave the long parts in this long novel will be rewarded.

    • 4/5
      Wonderfully inventive with its "angel treatise" and retelling of Biblical tales, this is unfortunately let down by the "coda" at the end that rambles quite a bit and bears only the thinnest (but fascinating) connection the the main part of the book.
    • 5/5
      As a young boy in the early 16th century, Antonious Bellori came across two angels. These angels were not beatific; they were grotesque and frightening, with claws and ashen faces, and they were greedily gnawing on raw fish. The encounter compelled Bellori to devote the rest of his life to the study of angels, and to seek an answer to the question 'Where did the angels go?' After a lifetime of research, he published The Nature of Angels in 1584.After describing Bellori's encounter with the angels, the middle portion of the novel consists of retellings of several stories from the Bible in which angels engage with humans. Most prominent are the story of Cain and Abel and the story of Noah and the Flood, each of which is in and of itself novella length. Knausgaard's versions, however, are like no Bible stories you've ever read.The Cain and Abel story's setting is akin to 19th century Norway, and is filtered through the lens of a modern psychological viewpoint. In this version, the reader questions which of the two brothers deserves to die.The story of Noah's Ark is told almost entirely from the viewpoint of Noah's sister, It's not a spoiler to say that in the end she dies. In Knausgaard's reimagining she stands shoulder-deep in water holding her grandchild above her head watching the ark sail away. Noah, too ashamed to face his sister's pleas for help, is hiding below deck.The next part of the book returns to Bellori's life and his final days. He continues to contemplate and to resolve his theories relating to the existence of angels. He also continues to seek contacts with them, with some unsettling results. The final 50 or so pages of the book involve a morose man, living on an isolated island in modern day Norway, who is seeking salvation for an undisclosed crime, and who has some theories about angels himself.This is a unique book. There are some theological ponderings, but they are bearable, and don't interrupt the flow of the story. The surprising conclusions reached about the existence and nature of angels may disturb some believers. However, I highly recommend this book.4 1/2 stars