His demeanor is rough and gruff, but once the reader comes to understand why Ove is the way that he is, the coarseness of his character gives way a bit. Ove is a little OCD, as he has a strict routine that he follows, and that includes acting on the behalf of the Resident’s Association that he used to be Chairman of in checking to make sure everything is in order in the communal parking garage every morning. He’s a character that the reader can’t help but fall in love with, and Backman has made a brave choice in bringing to life a character who is, when we first met him, a tad bit unlikeable. In the end, will Ove come to see that he has an extended family of neighbours (along with a friendly feral cat that he winds up adopting) who likes him just as he is? Will his heart turn to gold, revealing that he’s not too much of an old grump at all? Well, does a bear poop in the woods?Īs noted, you can see things coming from a mile off in this novel, but that’s all a part of its charm - simply because Ove is so oblivious. However, every time that he tries to die - and I hope this isn’t much of a spoiler because the book’s pleasure lies in its predictability - he gets rudely interrupted by a neighbour or someone else who wants something of him. He is contemplating ending his life because he feels he no longer has anything to live for. His wife of 40 odd years has recently died and he has just lost his job due to downsizing. And some very bad things have happened to him by the start of this book. He’s a Swedish man in late middle age who is prickly and grumpy at best - but his terseness is a shell to protect him from the sorts of bad things that usually befall people in life. It’s a pretty good book.Ī Man Called Ove is simply about, well, a man called Ove. It turns out that a year might have been too long. I think what my mom was trying to tell me was that she thought I read too many weird books, so she wanted to give me something that was a little more “normal.” And what’s more normal than having a cat on the cover of a book? OK, the reason might partially have been that she misses her own cat, who passed on a couple of years ago, but, in any event, I got this book, and it has taken me a year to finally have the time to read it. No, the reason why I got this book as a gift was that there was a cat on the cover of the book and, because of that, she thought that the book might be a good read.
It had nothing to do with the fact that I had previously read and reviewed one of Backman’s other books and would have thus thought that I would like this book as well. Last Christmas, my mother gifted me a copy of Fredrik Backman’s A Man Called Ove.
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