A Man Called Ove: A Novel

I picked this up to read after my husband saw A Man Called Otto at the cinema and said he cried multiple times. I can’t get to the cinema myself owing to a little 8 month old, and I always prefer to read the book before seeing the film anyway, so here we are - and wow.This book is funny, moving, life-affirming, charming, delightful and all associated synonyms. It tells the story of Ove, who on the surface is just a grumpy old man who’s had enough of life. As the book progresses, we find out more and more about why Ove is the way he is, all while a wonderful cast of characters make their impact on him, forcing him to reassess the life he thought he was done with.Ove is a character who will go down in literary history. I fell in love with him. I also particularly enjoyed his new neighbour Parvaneh and her kids. There isn’t a single wasted or badly drawn character - everyone teaches Ove something, and vice versa. The way all of their story arcs were concluded at the end brought a tear to my eye; the denouement was my favourite part of the book.I can see why so many people have fallen in love with Fredrik Backman’s writing style after reading this. He manages to make you laugh out loud in the same breath as teaching you something profound about life. There are a few paragraphs near the end about ageing and grief which everyone needs to read.It did take a little while for me to get into this simply because it’s such a different sort of book to my normal reads (psychological thrillers), but that’s just me - once I got going I couldn’t put it down. It’s so well rounded as a story that I couldn’t stop smiling at it once I’d closed the back cover. I can’t wait to see what Hollywood and Tom Hanks have done with it.Do not hesitate to read this. Thank you Fredrik Backman, and thank you Ove.

Really enjoyed this book. Sad, funny, poignant and uplifting. Life really !As a person of a more mature age I laughed at Ove’s frustrations with modern life. A great read and I will now try more of Fredrick Backman’s books.

I really enjoyed this book, it made me laugh and cry and the protagonist, Ove, was believable and lovable (but don't tell him I said that). Some reviews below do give away spoilers, so I won't say too much but Ove is 59 years old and has been widowed for 6 months. He likes things just so and comes across as a grumpy old man, though he's been through a lot so it's no wonder. A cat decides to adopt Ove, who grudgingly tolerates it but he comes to mean the world not just to the cat, but to his neighbours too, who see he really does have a heart. Ove is a little Grinch like, with less green but this book is so well written and I found I really came to care for Ove and engage in his story. This is a slow burner, not a pacy read, but it is truely remarkable

I am ashamed to say I have had this book sat on my Kindle for over six years! I knew as soon as I read the book description that I had to read it and can’t believe it has taken me this long to finally get round to reading it!Ove is a widow with no children or family. He is someone who most, if not all of us, would probably dislike and especially hate to live in the same street as. He is a stubborn, opinionated man who is a loner and a stickler for rules. So why did I love his character?There is just something about Ove that made my heart swell. For all his stubbornness and hostility towards others, there is so much more to him. We get glimpses of what life was like for him as a child and his marriage to his late wife. The more I got to know him, the more my fondness for him grew. It’s the unlikely friendships that he strikes up in this novel that really appealed to me and by the end I was both crying and laughing at this wonderful man.A Man Called Ove is a truly touching and heart-warming story that everyone should read. I am so annoyed with myself for leaving it so long before reading it! I adored Ove and couldn’t help but laugh at some of his antics in teaching people lessons about rules, or trying to prove a point and get his way. The ending in particular was highly emotional and I really didn’t want to turn the last page as I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to this character who brightened up my hours spent reading his story. An absolute gem of a book!

Enjoyed this so much. Typing this review after just finishing the book.Still wiping away tears. If you have read Tom Stoppard you will appreciate the humour in this.Highly recommended.

Every so often, one’s life feel blessed when a book comes into one’s possession. You wonder why it has taken so long for it to come to your attention and once it has been devoured, one wonders how you could ever have survived up to the present day, without it. ‘A Man Called Ove’ by Fredrik Backman is such a book.This is a sheer delight to read. A simple, at face value, tale of a cantankerous old Swedish man, a widower, who lives alone in a small but decent residential area and who until recently was Chair of the local resident’s association. He is sullen, he is aging, he is grumpy, he is bad-tempered, he is obnoxious…I could go on.And yet, there is so much more to Ove and as we weave our way through the book and we see some flashbacks to his younger life, his first job, his relationship with his father, the time he met his future wife and his relationships with his neighbours, we learn so much more and we see what a layered personality and character, Ove really is.It cannot be ignored that this book has tremendous similarities with the wonderful Clint Eastwood film, Gran Torino. However, it is in no way a rip-off. This story is probably happening in neighbourhoods all over the world and I am sure all readers will know of their own Ove, somewhere in their lives.You will laugh (the scene in the hospital with the clown had me aching with mirth), you will cry, you will roll your eyes and you will think. It is almost impossible not to read this in one sitting and I guarantee it will be one of the few books that goes into your ‘To Read Again’ pile. It certainly is in mine.A masterpiece of modern fiction.

This novel is about a crusty old man Ove who finds out that the world just wouldn't leave him alone, invading his privacy, constantly disrupting an all-important task, and basically making it impossible for him to stay grumpy and misanthropic.Backman does paint Ove in sympathetic strokes and inject enough pathos and humour into this story, but the cast of characters is overblown with stereotypes; for example, his new neighbours, the bumblingly goodnatured Patrick, with his heavily pregnant and disarmingly bossy wife, Parvaneh, her ethnicity a purposeful detail, their two daughters, the gregarious 3-year-old and the prematurely jaded 7-year-old you just know would somehow win Ove over and melt his icy exterior, unlikely as it is set out to be initially. Elsewhere in the neighbourhood there is a nasty blonde woman with a yapping dog, who is bent on attacking a scraggly cat that chooses to 'adopt' Ove, a overwhelmingly cheerful and helpful overweight teen, Jimmy, and in the next house, Anita and Rune, with whom he and his wife, Sonja, once shared a close friendship, and other wallk-on characters who serendipitously descend on Ove's life, even as he tries to keep them all at arm's length.There is at the heart of Ove a burden of sadness and loss that Backman tries to withhold and release at the opportune moment, and in piecemeal. Of course, given the Hollywoody set-up of the story frame, it is predictably shocking, as contradictory as that sounds.My enjoyment of this novel was also plagued by telltale signs of awkward and histrionic turns of phrase that somehow did not feel like it was originally written in English, though my kindle edition did not mention that it had been translated from Swedish.That said, it was not a novel without its merits, and I can see why most readers would rate this book highly. In a sea of fiction that tends towards the darker impulses of the human psyche, this novel yields of itself a positive vibe and assurance that is both life-affirming and hopeful.

Good

Was a great read

Se trata de un cascarrabias poco sociable que se enfada por cualquier cosa.Es también comico a la vez. Más avanza el libro mas te das cuenta que este hombre tiene un buén corazón. Me encantó el libro y voy a leer mas libros de este escritor.

Absolutely a lovely read. I laughed and cried from start to finish. A feel good novel that addresses the best and worst on us humans in a personal and heartfelt story.

Une histoire tout public, émouvante et drôle en même temps, bien écrit, je l'ai adoré, Ove est un des caractères le plus sympathiques que j'ai 'rencontré' depuis longtemps, Je recommande ce livre à toute personne qui aime rire et pleurer également en lisant l' histoire d'une vie qui apparaît toute banale au début, mais graduellement la vérité se révèle... je ne dis pas plus, lisez-le!

I read this book in a very short time and went through a whirlpool of emotions while reading it. Definitely opened my eyes on the the curmudgeons in my life.