Boy meets Girl: Karl Ove Knausgard's story in the New Yorker

The New Yorker this week brings us a piece by Norwegian novelist Karl Ove Knausgaard, Come Together (nice reference the Beatles song and the bumbling attempts at passion and seduction by the main character), I assume this is not a story, though it actually does have a story-like arc to it, but an excerpt from Knausgaard's six-volume, audaciously titled novel, My Struggle - which is appearing only gradually in English and has gotten good notices. This piece, too, makes me want to read the novel, or at least some of it - six volumes might be too much self-scrutiny, even for fans of Proust. In this piece, the narrator, now an adult, recalls his first forays into sex, his first "girlfriend" - and K. very effectively captures so much of the awkwardness of the age of puberty. The character, also named Karl Ove - yes, this is another first-person novel that pushes the boundaries of memoir - recalls the first yearnings, then seeing a girl from another town and feeling a shock of attraction, then getting word that she's interested in him - and then - what to do about it? He's shy about asking her out, and what does "going out" mean anyway? He picks up on how weird boys of that age felt about having their parents hear them on the phone with a a girl (this must be different today thanks to cell phones), the social pressures, not being sure how to approach - should he hold her hand? how can he begin that? - wondering what she wants and doesn't want, most of all trying to figure out what to say to each other, how to fill the time when they're together (they seem to have little in common, both are very shy) - they essentially bike around their small town, which actually sounds kind of sweet, and then engage in a very long and pointless kiss - and then, as these things happen, she suddenly doesn't want to see him anymore (perhaps freaked out by his ardent kiss, or more likely just a changeable kid - Karl Ove wasn't, on closer inspection, what she'd anticipated from a distance) and he's heart-broken, and will get over it of course. The story is somewhat binocular: on the one hand it feels very exotic, full of Norwegian words and cultural references, and on the other it's universal - could take place in any culture - which is part of the beauty of literature, it's why we read. I'm a little puzzled - and the novel will work this out I'm sure - as to the Karl Ove's character: at times he seems like a social misfit, one of the unpopular kids, but then again this lovely girl picks him out among all the guys, so perhaps there's a disjunction between his self-image and the image he projects. Music seems to be a big part of his identity, and his taste runs to British punk, whereas most of his contemporaries are very conventional - this will isolate him somewhat but will no doubt build his personality as well.