Ratings: 5⭐

Genre: Fiction

Page Count: 295

Format: Paperback

Originally published: 27 August 2012

Translated: Henning Koch

Publisher: Sceptre Books

A Man Called Ove-Fredrik Backman

A Man Called Ove-Fredrik Backman

A Man called Ove Summary

Ove, a 59-year-old-Swedish man who has lost his parents at a young age, and his wife and job quite recently, is left with his house with memories, staunch principles, strict routines, and a short fuse. He wakes up every morning, goes around the Residential Area to check if everything is “normal”, comes back, and hopes to kill himself so that he can unite with his wife in the heaven above.

He is not the person who likes small talk or feels the need to smile or be polite to everyone he talks to. People think of him as “the bitter neighbor from hell”. But behind this shell of cruelty, there’s a story- of sadness and joy, of laughter and cries.

One day in early winter, when a chatty young couple with two chatty young daughters arrive next door and accidentally flatten Ove’s mailbox, it leads to unexpected friendships with kids and cats. A Man called Ove is a heartwarming tale of a grumpy old man and his relations to life, death, friendships, and love.

 

Personal Reviews

When I finished reading this book at night, I felt so overwhelmed with emotions. I held the book close and hugged it to sleep that night. ❤

A Man called Ove strikes so many emotional chords of the heart. It feels like a warm hug to your soul, it soothes it. This book left me with a hollowness, made me feel the emotions of every character in the book.

The author has explicitly described the plot, with the tiniest details, it feels so real. The storytelling is so gripping and unbearably pleasant.

“Death is a strange thing. People live their whole lives as if it does not exist, and yet it’s often one of the greatest motivations for living. Some of us, in time, become so conscious of it that we live harder, more obstinately, with more fury. Some need its constant presence to even be aware of its antithesis. Others become so preoccupied with it that they go into the waiting room long before it has announced its arrival. We fear it, yet most of us fear more than anything that it may take someone other than ourselves.”

I thought “opposites attract” was only applicable to magnets until I met Ove and Sonja.  Sonja was everything that Ove wasn’t.

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

It almost brought tears to my eyes when I read the part where Ove meets Sonja on a train and took genuine efforts for her. The way Ove looks at her and listens to her like she is the only girl in the world. My heart aches to think so few people actually get to experience this in their entire lives.

It has such a unique take on love. Ove misses his wife’s absence in every moment, so much that he thinks of ending his life every day just to reunite with her. Even after her death, he does all the tiny things that she always loved like giving her pink flowers. Love doesn’t fade away with time but rather grows.

I just love some of the quotes from A Man called Ove.

“Loving someone is like moving into a house. At first, you fall in love with all the new things, amazed every morning that all this belongs to you, as if fearing that someone would suddenly come rushing in through the door to explain that a terrible mistake had been made, you weren’t actually supposed to live in a wonderful place like this.

Then over the years, the walls become weathered, the wood splinters here and there, and you start to love that house not so much because of all its perfections, but rather for its imperfections. You get to know all the nooks and crannies. How to avoid getting the key caught in the lock when it’s cold outside. Which of the floorboards flex slightly when one steps on them or exactly how to open the wardrobe doors without them creaking. These are the little secrets that make it your home.”

Fredrick Backman’s writing is so simple and elegant that it feels like a lullaby but with a much greater emotional impact. Backman’s take on life, death, friendship, and love is appreciatively distinctive.

The characters other than Ove are so funny and adorable, especially Cat Annoyance. I’m not a cat person and yet I totally loved it.

A man called Ove makes you laugh, cry, and stays with you forever.

About Fredrik Backman- Author of A Man called Ove

Fredrik Backman- Author of a Man called Ove

Fredrik Backman- Author of a Man called Ove

Fredrik Backman is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (soon to be a major motion picture starring Tom Hanks), My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry, Britt-Marie Was Here, Beartown, Us Against You, as well as two novellas, And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer and The Deal of a Lifetime. Things My Son Needs to Know About the World, his first work of non-fiction will be released in the US in May 2019. His books are published in more than forty countries. He lives in Stockholm, Sweden, with his wife and two children.

 

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