A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman

When I first met Ove in this charming novel, I couldn’t help but make comparisons to the men dearest to me … my grandfather, father and Husband.  Like Ove, these are reliable and capable men of few words.

They are happiest with a project around the house, helping others fix things or puttering in their workshops.  You’ll undoubtedly find such men restless at parties and bored with small talk  — there are things to be done, wrongs to be corrected and projects to finish.

Like Ove, these men have firm convictions about right and wrong, quietly do what needs to be done and have no patience for the useless or foolish.

When you first open this Swedish novel, it’s hard to believe the reviews that praise A Man Called Ove as a joyful and heart-warming novel.  Ove is a curmudgeon living in a Swedish housing estate who spends his days grumpily policing the neighborhood while plotting his own suicide.  His charming and beloved wife, Sonja has died and he sees little point in carrying on.

So he spends his days making sure the neighbors have left their trash bins in the proper location, that no cars are driving in the residential-only areas and that the walkways are shoveled just so…

…it takes him fifteen minutes to free up the paving between the house and the shed.  He works with care.  Straight lines, even edges.  People don’t shovel snow that way any more.  Nowadays, they just clear a way, they use snow blowers and all sorts of things.  Any old method will do, scattering snow all over the place.  As if that was the only thing that mattered in the life:  pushing one’s way forward.

As you get to know Ove, you start to sympathize with his on-going lament that people don’t see things his way, which is a shame because they’re missing out on the right way of life. These days, he surmises, everyone worries more about their newfangled computers and cell phones. People don’t take the time to learn simple things like how to fix household items or how to back a trailer into a driveway.  (I had to chuckle here as Husband is consistently called upon to back trailers, a skill he possesses which few do not – [she says proudly].)

Ove just wants to be left alone to kill himself and he would have done so if it weren’t for a string of demands interfering with his plans.  His hapless neighbors need a ride to the hospital.  A mangy stray cat is attacked by a dog in his front yard.  A buddy of his is ill and his wife can’t get the heat working, so Ove must stash his already noosed rope and go bleed her radiators.

While Ove fumes over the erratic intrusions into his various death plans (pills, hanging, gunshot…) we learn about his past.  The author gently gives us peeks into his past and his personality with some marvelous writing.

He had a job with the railway —

He had liked working there. Proper tasks, proper tools, a real job.

And then he sees Sonja on a train and conspires to meet her by taking her train several hours out of his way each evening and then travels back to his own station alone, sleeping in the luggage room and washing his clothes in the staff washroom.   When he finally gets up the nerve to talk with her,  they make plans to meet for dinner…

And when she did finally turn up, in long floral print skirt and a cardigan so red it that it made Ove shift his body weight from his right foot to his left, he decided that maybe her inability to be on time was not the most important thing.

Sonja and Ove have a marriage of opposites but full of love and quiet happiness:

…she never managed to make Ove read a single Shakespeare play.  But as soon as they moved into their terraced house he spent every evening for weeks on end in the tool shed.  And when he was done, the most beautiful book cases she had ever seen were in the living room.  “You have to keep them somewhere”, he muttered and poked a little cut on his thumb with the tip of a screwdriver.  And she crept into his arms and said that she loved him.  And he nodded.

There are some points where the plot strains credibility, but you will forgive.  Ove reluctantly agrees to teach his neighbor to drive and for some reason the stray cat goes along in the car.  This makes for some very funny observations (by the cat of course).

But the beauty of this novel is how the rag-tag group of supporting characters alter Ove’s life…neighbors, the stray cat, a love-struck letter carrier, a gay teen, a journalist — all keep interrupting his careful suicide plans.  

His capable (there’s that word again) assistance is needed to prevent one disaster after another. So what does a grumpy old man to do when death is calling, but life just keeps demanding he put things right?

Get your tissues ready as slowly, Ove is pulled back into life – because he is needed, and in the end, he is loved.  And if you’re like me, you’ll end up loving Ove too.

N.B.  I must compliment the translation of this Swedish novel — it is nothing short of brilliant — all the colloquialisms are intact, the humor works on many levels and the characters jump crisply off the page.

 

 

A digital review copy was provided by Simon &  Schuster via NetGalley.

 

 

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