A review by espookita
A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman

emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

My friends lent me this book and then had to bully me over the course of multiple weeks to actually pick it up and start reading. It’s not that I was expecting it to be bad, more so unrelatable and perhaps boring. I judged this book incredibly wrong. When I started reading this, (it took me about a month to read the whole thing) I read about 4 chapters in a sitting and had to put it down because this book brought me genuinely to tears every four chapters or so. It’s very simple, but its beauty is in its simplicity. Ove’s daily inspections, the drab Swedish winters, the heavy piles of snow, the sausage and potatoes for dinner every single day create this very easy picture of life to imagine that, while clearly Swedish, can also be found anywhere. Ove’s grumpy curmudgeonliness is a characteristic of old men worldwide. But there is such simple beauty. His loyalty to his Saab, his long-standing marriage that brought color to his life, his friendship with a neighbourhood cat. There is a profound amount of emotion within this book because it is not so much about adventures or stories, but about the way we humans live our lives and feel pain, fall in love, experience loss, and find our way through that grief to something new again. That is something valuable for everyone. There is not a single person I think who would not be able to gain something from this book. 100% recommendation.
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