A Man Called Ove
Written by Swedish author Fredrik Backman, translated by Henning Kock. A Man Called Ove comes with rave reviews and great ratings. This won’t be one of them. Ove is a curmudgeon who hardly ever speaks to anyone other than himself and complains about everything and everyone. He keeps to himself and cusses the stupidity in the world as he performs his daily rounds of the neighborhood making sure everyone abides by the association rules. Ove works with his hands, a genius Mr. Fix-it, a practical man in all ways, and he hates those "white shirts" (professionals) because they don’t know how to anything practical. Then a young family moves in across the street and Ove’s life changes forever for the better. You see Ove really has a heart of gold. It just takes a young family — incompetent husband whose career is in IT, pregnant Iranian wife, and two adorable children — to bring it to the surface. Sound familiar? I thought it might. To be fair ther