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Thursday, October 25, 2018

Review of A MAN CALLED OVE by Fredrik Backman

3 Stars
This book was somewhat ruined for me because I saw the film version before my book club chose it to read and discuss.

Ove is a 59-year-old widower who keeps trying and failing to commit suicide because he sees himself as “an old person with no purpose in the world.”  He is a grumpy man who despises his neighbours, and his feelings are only intensified when his attempts to kill himself are foiled by those neighbours.  A pregnant Iranian immigrant sees beyond Ove’s cantankerousness and she is instrumental in helping Ove re-engage with the outside world.

Ove reminds me very much of Walt Kowalski, the Clint Eastwood character in Gran Torino.  He constantly complains about everything and everyone; he seems to have little positive to say about anyone.  Gradually, however, his character becomes more developed:  “He believed so strongly in things:  justice and fair play and hard work and a world where right just had to be right.”  The reader  comes to understand why he is the way he is:  “To men like Ove and Rune dignity was simply that they’d had to manage on their own when they grew up, and therefore saw it as their right not to become reliant on others when they were adults.  There was a sense of pride in having control.  In being right. . . . Men like Ove and Rune were from a generation in which one was what one did, not what one talked about.” 

Ove has a particular hate for bureaucrats whom he calls the “men in white shirts.”  When his wife Sonja was injured in an accident, he received no help:  “They sat behind desks made of light-colored wood in various municipal offices and they apparently had endless amounts of time to instruct Ove in what documents had to be filled in for various purposes, but no time at all to discuss the measures that were needed for Sonja to get better. . . . But no one took responsibility.  No one cared.  They answered by reference to legal texts or other authorities.  Made excuses.” 

Even when one gets past Ove’s crusty exterior, he is not always a likeable character. He would actually have let the stray cat die were it not for Parvaneh’s intervention?  His obsession with the fact that Jimmy, one of his neighbours, is overweight becomes offensive.  Jimmy is repeatedly described as an “overweight young man” who is always asking people for something to eat.  Though the author is at pains to mention that it is “Not that Ove dislikes fat people.  Certainly not,” the descriptions of Jimmy as a “twin-size person” with “fat breasts” who “could attack a bowl of chips from all directions at one” and probably “tests bacon for a living” suggest otherwise.  Of course, Parvaneh’s husband is nicknamed “the Lanky One”, but it is his physical ineptness that Ove focuses on. 

Ove’s transformation does not ring true.  One of the three principles of convincing character change is that the character must indicate he/she is capable of changing.  When Sonja first starts dating Ove, her friends describe him as “a grumpy old man since he started elementary school” and throughout their marriage, he is indeed a curmudgeon.  Yet he becomes a man who becomes invested in the welfare of his neighbours?  Obviously, the author wanted a feel-good ending. 

I cannot say I didn’t enjoy the book.  There are wonderful touches of humour; for instance, I found the scene where Ove tries to buy an iPad hilarious.  The book, however, is rather too sentimental for my tastes and also too predictable.  But perhaps I’m just a grumpy old woman?!

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