A haunting and powerful account of mental illness near the end of My Struggle

Despite my concerns and reservations about Karl Ove Knausgaard's My Struggle: Book 6, I have to say that his account of the mental illness of his wife, Linda, whom we see become completely unraveled toward the end of Book 6, is as haunting and powerful an account of the devastating effect of mental illness on a marriage and a family as I've ever read. He achieves this sorrowful effect through careful build-up over the course of this long volume. For most of the book, when he is writing about his family and his marriage, we see them as a reasonably happy couple, getting by in tough financial times (before KOK became wealthy through sales of the book we are reading), strong parental and paternal involvement in family life, and the usual tensions and concerns of early parenthood. Beneath the surface, we begin to sense the cracks in the facade: the many phone conversations and messages between KOK and Linda are stunningly banal, as if taking care of the kids enables them to hide and ignore all the marital tensions. Toward the end of the volume, KOK reveals some scenes of real anger between the two of them, as he feels the victim of Linda's occasional rages and what he perceives as her injustice - criticizing him for not doing enough work around the house, for his withdrawal into his writing, etc. Reading those passages I was torn: I felt Linda was cruel and extremely difficult, but then again I felt that there must be two sides to this and we're seeing/reading only his. But then things take a turn: As KOK faces various deadlines and financial pressures, Linda goes into a manic phase, making ridiculous purchases, including a suburban "cabin" that they can neither afford nor maintain, and then she slips into a deep depression - and KOK's account of her depression is extremely credible and painfully sad. I could kind of see this coming over the arc of this long narrative, but it's still harrowing to read; if the 6-book narrative ends on this sad note - w/ KOK achieving fame and fortune through his writing while losing his wife and his family, though no fault of his own - I, too, will be sad. We all know that Scandinavian culture is generally dark and full of despair (Strindberg, Bergman, e.g.) and I see this long novel heading for the darkness.