Post Script: A Man Called Ove – Fredrik Backman

 Deceptively simple, yet so insightful; the human condition revealed in a series of flash backs and laughter.

A Man Called Ove

Fredrik Backman

Hachette Australia

Sceptre

ISBN: 9781444775808

 

 

Description:

Ove is almost certainly the grumpiest man you will ever meet. Every morning he makes his inspection rounds of the local streets, even though it’s been years since he was fired as Chairman of the Residents’ Association in a vicious ‘coup d’etat’.

But behind the surly pedant there is a story, and a sadness.

And when on a November morning his new (foreign) neighbours accidentally flatten Ove’s letterbox, it sets off a comical and heart-warming tale of unexpected friendship.

My View:

Whatever you think you know or have heard about this book, your knowledge is incomplete. Those who pick up this book and think they are getting a light hearted foray into the memories of a lonely, fastidious, irritating and stubborn old man (when did 59 become old?) are mistaken, what you get is a bitter sweet expose of a life well lived, a life with a strong moral conscience and a weak social compass. Ove is adrift on the rocky sea of human relationships, he has lost his path and with only the echoes of his wife’s guiding voice to direct him, he doesn’t always get it right. He doesn’t like the world without her. The world mostly doesn’t care about him…until new neighbours move into his street. Pandemonium then reigns and life changes completely – for everyone. This story is delightful and if you think this book is “chick lit”, “fluff and nonsense”, women’s fiction, you are wrong again…my husband (and yours too if you buy the book) will be sitting beside you deep in thought and he wont be able to put the book down.

 

This narrative made me smile and laugh and then cry. I was deeply engaged in this story; the characters are fun, complex, beguiling…there is a little bit of someone you know in most of them. You recognise there is a little bit of “Oveness” in your own life and this makes you smile too. “Sonja said once that to understand men like Ove and Rune, one had to understand from the very beginning that they were men caught in the wrong time. Men who only required a few simple things from life, she said. A roof over their heads, a quiet street, the right make of car, and a woman to be faithful to. A job where you had a proper function. A house where things broke at regular intervals, so that you always had something to tinker with. All people want to have dignified lives, dignity just means something different to different people.” I think maybe we actually share a lot in common with Ove, a lot more than we initially appreciate. And that is this book in a kernel – there is a little of Ove in all of us, a dignified life is one we all aspire to – and as Sonja remarked, “Dignity means something different to different people.”

 

Pick up this book and enjoy, be entertained, be amused and appreciate the “otherness” in the world around you (and make sure you have a tissue in your hands as you do so).