A MAN CALLED OVE
Author: Fredrik Backman
Publisher: Sceptre
ISBN: 9781476738024
Genre: Contemporary Fiction

I don’t normally read contemporary or literary fiction, in the same way I like to avoid getting a nasty skin rash — through avoidance. But after reading a couple of reviews, and seeing it listed on a couple of blogs as a book to read. I found myself staring at the cover in my local bookstore and thinking, okay, maybe this won’t be so bad. Maybe I won’t get a skin rash, vomit, swoon or faint from cracking open its pages. So I bought it.

Sure enough, I checked myself regularly through out the reading process and, no rashes. I did, however, laugh a lot—because of Ove’s droll observations and the awkward situations he found himself dealing with—and smiled at the nicknames he gave everyone in his neighbourhood, including the mangy cat. I was also left shaking my head in wonder, when the seemingly innocent act of drilling a hole in the ceiling turns out to be a lot more than drilling a hole in the ceiling.

There is so much more going on in Ove’s life, that trickles in through those first few chapters which, by the end, make you sit up and realise what’s really going on. And just why there is no colour left in Ove’s life anymore. To quote:

Death is a strange thing. People live their whole lives as if it does not exist, and yet it’s often one of the great motivations for the living… For the greatest fear of death is always that it will pass us by. And leave us there alone.

All people at root are time optimists. We always think there’s enough time to do things with other people. Time to say things to them. And then something happens and then we stand there holding on to words like ‘if’.

People said Ove saw the world in black and white. But she was color. All the color he had.

Poignant, funny, uplifting and yes, at times, heartbreakingly sad, Ove has lived a simple life that’s anything but simple. In that the challenges he’s had to overcome, and the people—good and bad—that have shaped and moulded the boy through to the man that he becomes, all become part of the very cleverly written backstory. From Ove’s interactions with his father, through to the loving relationship he has with his wife, Sonja, and how they met and fell in love.

But it’s in the present we see how Ove’s life slowly transforms through the interactions with his (somewhat) friends and neighbours. Flawed people who make mistakes, argue (a lot) and drive Ove nuts yet, who at times, also touch Ove deeply in ways even he never expected — especially his next door neighbour, Parvaneh and her two young daughters. And even though Ove tells these people exactly what he thinks of them, they still manage to be there and to rally round, and change a grumpy old man’s life, in ways he never expected all for the better.

A Man Called Ove is an immensely enjoyable read and one you will not easily forget. Certainly, it touched me deeply.