It’ll probably make you laugh, and cry and smile. Instead, it’s a hopeful, heartwarming and intimate slice of life that perhaps you may enjoy spending some time in. As for the plot, this is not a complex or even surprising story, and I’d actually venture to say it’s probably fairly unrealistic, too - but it’s not really meant to be any of that. In terms of the writing, it’s evenly paced and accessible. I’m personally more adverse to sappiness, but the book’s comedic qualities help to balance it out. For some people, that will be a non-issue, they might even like it. Ove’s salty humor really is the book’s saving grace when it comes to it tonally feeling a little sappy, which it is at some parts. I’m sure it’s a lovely book, but maybe some other time, I thought over and over.Īnd it is earnest and that is precisely what this story is about, but it’s also funny and entertaining.

A grumpy old man who learns to get along with his neighbors? I know how this story goes. I had put off reading A Man Called Ove for years despite the stellar reviews because, I figured it would be dreadfully earnest and perhaps a bit sappy.

I’ve come to realize that I strongly prefer books with a little bit of humor in them, which this one doles out in nice doses.

When new neighbors moves in, good-natured but also determined to barge into his life, Ove is reluctantly dragged back into being a part of his community again. The book is as much about Ove’s past as it is about the present, and it spends a lot of time reaching back into his past to draw a full and colorful character sketch of this man and how he became the principled old secluded grouch named Ove. He is unyielding, difficult, lonely, unhappy but essentially a good man. He respects people who are useful, who can build things and fix things. Ove is a man of few words but many principles, and he sees the world in black and white.

He lives in a quaint neighborhood with quaint neighbors, almost all of whom he detests and generally deems to be unbearable for a myriad of reasons. “You shouldn’t even be allowed to rewind a cassette,” grumbles Ove.įrederik Backman’s novel, originally published in Swedish, is about a cantankerous and curmudgeonly old man, who is of course the titular man called Ove. “Thanks for the help,’ he calls out, as if Ove hadn’t just spent the last ten minutes insulting him. A man who needs all that to reverse with a trailer shouldn’t be bloody doing it in the first place.” “Reverse radar and parking sensors and cameras and crap like that. And still, even knowing that, I was surprised how quickly it won me over (nineteen pages in, to be exact). I read it mostly because I was looking for a sure thing. By Jennifer Marie Lin on Jun 28th, 2018 (Last Updated Oct 5th, 2018)īy now, many many positive reviews of A Man Called Ove have been written, it’s been turned into a movie and is soon likely to be re-adapted by Tom Hanks, plus the author has gone on to write other well-received novels.

Book a man called ove review