A Man Called Ove

Chances are everyone knows someone like Ove. An old man, set in his ways, with a black and white sense of right and wrong. Gets up at the crack of dawn to make sure everything — literally everything in his neighborhood — is in proper order, same as the day before. Because God forbid something changes!

However, Swedish author Frederik Backman doesn’t reduce his main character to a series of stereotypical clichés. Ove has a rich backstory; almost every other chapter is a flashback detailing his life story up to the present day. Some of it explains why Ove is the way he is in his old age, other times it’s warm and fuzzy, yet poignant.

Like Ove’s relationship with his wife, Sonja. They’re complete opposites — she’s a teacher who loves Shakespeare, while Ove is a practical, hands-on kind of man — but it works. They love each other deeply, and Ove hadn’t truly lived before he met her. Or after, for that matter.

He may want to be left alone most of the time, but Ove ends up attracting people to him anyway. This is a giggle-out-loud transformation story of one man who really doesn’t feel like living anymore, but finds reasons to stick around and care about people anyway. Even if they annoy him at first because they don’t know how to do simple things “correctly”.

Like his new Iranian neighbors who backed a moving trailer into his mailbox. Ove wouldn’t have given another thought to “The Pregnant One” or “The Lanky One” if the mailbox incident hadn’t happened, but over the course of the story — and despite Ove’s best efforts to be a grumpy old man who keeps to himself — he essentially becomes one of their honorary family members.

A Man Called Ove is fortunate enough to have two film adaptations. One in 2016 of the same name (in the original Swedish) and a 2022 easy to understand, Americanized version starring Tom Hanks. Hopefully Tom Hanks and company do this heartwarming story justice!