It seems every publication needs to create several articles about his work now. However, they never seem to mention a few striking things. Every review and comment dwells on the extreme detail in which he writes. It is true, but it is also true that v. few authors can write in such detail and keep it interesting. Of course, Dickens and Hardy are two of the best examples.
Even one of Karl Ove’s friends tells him ‘…you could get 21 pages out of a trip to the bathroom and back, but not many of us writers can do that and you should not disparage us for that…’ (a paraphrase, but near verbatim). But those critics never seem to grasp that it is the extreme detail that draws us into K.O.'s existence. After 500 pages, we all are much more Karl Oves than we were when we started reading.
The 2nd matter is that Karl Ove writes very well on Literature, philosophy and art. Every sentence on those matters is worth reading slowly and deliberately.
3rd, I find it striking that Karl Ove has absolutely no sense of humour at all - zero. Imagine a 3500 page bio & no sense of humour!
Finally, I read some of the authors he admired as deserving of awards. He himself has low self esteem and thinks his works unworthy. I read Vesaas,The birds. If your library has it, I recommend it. It is a small book - a mere crumb cf. KOK - of maybe 200 small pages, but it has a most unusual narrator and plot and sticks in one’s mind like too much oatmeal before bedtime.