The Author (Karl Ove Knausgaard)

Award-winning Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgaard gained his national and international reputation after publishing a series of novels that he, his family, critics, and the public all acknowledge are autobiography that have been only slightly fictionalized. His work tends to be controversial for that reason, with some family members commenting that Knausgaard’s claiming and utilizing of their lives for his artistic purposes has caused them considerable pain. This apparently fundamental creative sensibility has clearly carried into this particular book, itself the first of a quartet of similarly self-sourcing essay collections, one defined by each season of the year.

In this book, the author turns his attention and his contemplative, analytical nature towards the minutiae of day-to-day life, considering everything from “Toilet Bowls” to “Dawn,” from “Flies” to “Vomit,” from “Churches” to “Loneliness.” His writings on most of these various subjects tend to...