Book Bearings
A Man Called Ove
- 346 pages · about 6 hours
- First published 2012
- 40 editions
Bookshop.org links may earn us a commission. It supports independent bookstores and costs you nothing.
1 About this book
Ove is fifty-nine, a man of fixed principles and strict routines who drives a Saab and thinks the world has gone soft. Every morning he patrols the small housing development where he lives, checking that nobody has parked where they should not. His neighbors think him the most bad-tempered man they know. Then a lively young family moves in next door and manages to flatten his mailbox, and Ove, much against his will, finds people beginning to rely on him. Chapters set in the present alternate with chapters from his past, which show how he became the man he is. Fredrik Backman's first novel was published in Swedish in 2012.
- Friendship
- Humor
- Loss (Psychology)
- Novel
- Neighbors
- Older men
- Love
- Conduct of life
2 What to expect
A Swedish novel about a rigid, bad-tempered man of fifty-nine whose solitary routines are upset when a noisy young family moves in next door. Chapters about the present, which are comic and episodic, alternate with simpler, fable-like chapters from his past that explain his sadness. It is warm, funny and unashamedly sentimental, and it deals with bereavement and with thoughts of suicide, handled gently.
Good for readers who want: a warm, funny novel, a grumpy hero with a past, and an easy, moving read.
3 About Fredrik Backman
Bio adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
4 More by Fredrik Backman
5 Similar books
- The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
- Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
- An Abundance of Katherines by John Green
- Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
- James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
- Emma by Jane Austen
- Good Omens by Terry Pratchett
- Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift