October Child cover art

October Child

Preview
LIMITED TIME OFFER

3 months free
Try for £0.00
£8.99/mo thereafter. Renews automatically. Terms apply. Offer ends 31 July 2025 at 23:59 GMT.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.

October Child

By: Linda Boström Knausgård
Narrated by: Jane Weatherstone
Try for £0.00

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Offer ends 31 July 2025 23:59 GMT. Cancel monthly.

Buy Now for £15.99

Buy Now for £15.99

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.
Cancel

About this listen

From 2013 to 2017, Linda Boström Knausgård was periodically interned in a psychiatric ward where she was subjected to electroconvulsive therapy. As the treatments at this 'factory' progressed, the writer’s memories began to disappear.

What good is a writer without her memory?

This book, based on the author’s experiences, is an eloquent and profound attempt to hold on to the past, to create a story, to make sense and to keep alive ties to family, friends and even oneself. Moments from childhood, youth, marriage, parenting and divorce flicker during October Child. This is the story of one woman’s struggle against mental illness and isolation. It is a raw testimony of how writing can preserve and heal.

©2020 Linda Boström Knausgård (P)2021 World Editions
Art & Literature Authors Medical Professionals & Academics Women

Listeners also enjoyed...

Life Is What You Make It cover art
Rock, Paper, Scissors and Other Stories cover art
The Holocaust as Seen Through the Innocence of a Child cover art
The Polish Nurse cover art
Little Matches cover art
Holding on by Letting Go cover art
Fierce Joy cover art
So-Called Normal cover art
Running Is a Kind of Dreaming cover art
Three O'Clock in the Morning cover art
The Long Road from Kandahar cover art
Love Is Not Enough cover art
The American Fiancee cover art
A Place for Everything cover art
Three cover art
What My Mother and I Don't Talk About cover art

Critic reviews

“Swedish novelist Boström Knausgård brilliantly melds memoir and speculative nonfiction in her stirring account of the four years she spent in and out of a psychiatric ward.... Part fever-dream, part quest to retrieve her memories, Boström Knausgård’s account expertly plumbs the treacherous crevasses of a creative mind.” (Publishers Weekly)

October Child is stunningly frank and urgently told. Linda Boström Knausgård writes with what appears to be a willingness to expose herself utterly. This makes for a painful and powerful book that asks complicated questions of its readers and acknowledges the impossibility of simple answers. An extraordinary work.” (Chris Power, author of Mothers: Stories)

"(Boström Knausgård's) first openly autobiographical book becomes an act of self-examination powerful enough to match if not surpass those of her ex-husband’s.” (The Guardian)

All stars
Most relevant  
5 hours of almost incoherent monologue. Maybe I missed the point. Not for me, anyway.

Not for me

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

An intensely painful story, beautifully told. Incredible use of language to describe the mental states of bipolar disease.

Beautiful and painful

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.