A Man Called Ove

A Man Called Ove

By Fredrik Backman

Meet Ove. He’s a curmudgeon—the kind of man who points at people he dislikes as if they were burglars caught outside his bedroom window. He has staunch principles, strict routines, and a short fuse. People call him “the bitter neighbor from hell.” But must Ove be bitter just because he doesn’t walk around with a smile plastered to his face all the time?
Behind the cranky exterior there is a story and a sadness. So when one November morning a chatty young couple with two chatty young daughters move in next door and accidentally flatten Ove’s mailbox, it is the lead-in to a comical and heartwarming tale of unkempt cats, unexpected friendship, and the ancient art of backing up a U-Haul. All of which will change one cranky old man and a local residents’ association to their very foundations.

This one has shades of Eleanor Oliphant is Perfectly Fine and The Rosie Project, books about people who simply have trouble connecting with other people, and (of course, I mean, these aren't tragedies here, although a lot is sad in all three books) the eventual connections and friendships they find in spite of it, by the end.

I was charmed by Ove, even though the writing style for me was hard to get into.  It might have been the translation (although I doubt it) but it had both a very staccato feel as well as a kind of sing-songy rhythm/ child's verse sentence structure in parts.  Like, "Here is a man who looks angrily at the cat.  The cat looks unaffected by the anger." (That's a made up example).

Ove definitely has been through a lot, as we find out in the course of the book that his mother died when he was young, his father died in an accident when Ove was sixteen, he gets fired from his beloved train job from a false theft accusation, his house burns down, the insurance he had on it was fraudulent, his wife loses their child and the use of her legs in a bus accident, his wife gets cancer and dies a week before he's let go from his job (I think - the timeline of those last two is hinky, since at points he goes to his wife's grave, which already has a gravestone up.  I happen to know it can take a while, sometimes months and months for a gravestone to be done, unless somehow Ove has harassed the stone cutters into doing it overnight [not a real stretch, considering]).  Even so, he was incredibly rude and grumpy, and there were definitely points that felt like the book took kind of a magical realism approach to how anyone in real life would be completely turned off by his attitude.

The book did read a little sit-commy at times, like during arguments between the pregnant woman and her husband.  It swung between that and just, like, treacle-y heartbreak in the flashback chapters.  I think the author was going for more black comedy, particularly in the present day chapters as Ove tries again and again to kill himself, but it sheer amount of terrible things that happened to him as a young adult were like, ridiculous after a point.  It was jarring to bounce between them, I guess. 

In fact, all the timelines were hinky - we find out that his neighbor has dementia and his wife can't care for him anymore, but his neighbor can't be that much older than Ove, since their wives were pregnant at the same time. Plus, we find out in the last chapter that after all this, Ove dies in his sleep four years later, like, whaaat? In this day and age, and with modern medicine being what it is, seems kinda strange that at least three people have died or become completely incapacitated by age 65 in this subdivision.  Seems to me like they should be investigating the water around there.  And what kind of place is Sweden where they just take people away for having dementia?  Does this actually happen, because if so, it's both horrifying and tempting. In the US they do as little as possible to care for people so you generally stay at home until you start leaving the house in the middle of the night and then get into car accidents from trying to drive to your accountant's office at 4 in the morning for a non-existent meeting, at which time the family will just take away your car keys and call it good and you STILL won't be forcibly removed from your home.

I'm kind of grumpy myself.  I've just started the next book and I'm already unhappy. Is there going to be a day that we can eliminate UNNECESSARY RAPE as character shorthand for female trauma? I did read that Rapunzel book, and there was definitely some there which I did get through, and I don't know if I've just already reached my rape quota for the year, or if it just felt extremely and unpleasantly gratuitous, but Paolo Bacigalupi, you are on my shit list.


23: A Book Set in Scandanavia