I’ve just finished reading the third volume of My Struggle, by Karl Ove Knausgaard, a Norwegian whose six-volume memoir recounts in minute detail his traumatic experiences as a child and later as a husband and father of four. The fourth volume has just been translated into English and I’ve ordered it from the library.

You’d think that growing up in Norway, one of the wealthiest countries in the world, where every citizen is guaranteed a livelihood as well as free education and health care, wouldn’t give rise to adverse experiences. But remember, Norway is dark for at least five months of the year, and it’s very cold. Children are stuck indoors with their families, and if family life is not good, there is nowhere to escape.

Knausgaard’s ACE score is surely higher than 3. His father was verbally brutal and also distant with him. His mother abandoned him when he was a teenager to return to school and left him with his father in a small, isolated town. His father, in turn, often left his son alone at home, and eventually his parents divorced. Later, his father became an alcoholic, but it was obvious from the author’s description of his moodiness, that he suffered issues with depression.

Last week I heard Knausgaard on the local radio station during his tour of the U.S. to promote the English translation of his fourth volume. He sounded sad, even though his memoir is the most widely read book in Scandinavia (Knausgaard has been living in Sweden for the past decade with his wife and four children). He said the only way he could separate himself from the pain of his childhood was to write about it, and that’s what he does, with an astonishing ability to recall every moment of his life in intimate detail.

Like many of his countrymen, he also drinks (too much), smokes (too much), and will probably suffer some of the typical health conditions associated with high ACEs. He blamed part of his struggle to the rigid social norms imposed by Norwegian culture during the last century, which have of course improved since then. By sharing his own pain and shame at being what he considers a “weak” person, he makes us more aware of what we need to do to nurture our young.