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 there is more to the story than this, and we do learn why Ove is the way he is as his past misfortunes are revealed. And the story is engaging and filled with humor. Unfortunately, the writing is elementary, filled with cliches and tropes, and the characters, including Ove, are cliches themselves.  There is no end to the cliches.  At times it seems as if Backman is writing to children, and I could easily visualize the picture book drawings as I read each passage. 

This is best read as a fairy tale.  Read it to your children.  

What alcoholic beverage does this book go best with?  None.  Drink beer; don’t read the book.


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