Book Review: A Man Called Ove (Fredrik Backman)
As the new year rolls around, I begin to question many things, among them being rather existential questions such as the point of the last year, and what I’ve lived through throughout the past 365 days. Each year we grow another 365 days older, which seems obvious, but time can really fly by you in a flash. This month I decided to read a book that would help me cherish the small and mundane things in life. Coincidentally, the book A Man Called Ove was sitting on the public library display shelf just as I made this decision.
The past few weeks have been hectic, and even the smallest things seem new and difficult in the pressuring environment of the new year— perfectionism really kills you around this time of the year. This book taught me to appreciate things just as they are now; because you really don’t know when your daily life will become a memory.
A Man Called Ove is a novel about the life of an ornery old man named… as you can probably guess, Ove. The book is full of his thoughts about the small grievances of life and his passionate hate for people who don’t follow the rules. On the outside, he simply seems like an old man who refuses to be happy, but what we discover later on in the story is that he’s just lost the happiness in his life.
A year prior to the start of the story, Ove’s wife dies and this destroys him. He turns to his old ways of trudging through life, as if it were a chore. Around the middle point of the book, Ove tries to commit suicide, coming up with elaborate plans to ensure its success. He fails every single time though, because a new family has just moved into the neighborhood and is oddly keen to befriend him. This family, a wife and her husband along with her two daughters, are an infuriating group of people according to Ove, but it soon becomes clear that he’s infatuated with the children and cares for the family as if they were his own (which perhaps, they have become so, as he’s just recently lost his only family member).
Eventually he starts to live his life again, packing away his wife’s old things, and he becomes an integral part of the community that he used to despise for their idiocy. It’s a rather ironic turn of events, but the way that the book is written and the sprinkles of his old life where we see how his past has influenced him into the person he’s become is beautiful. Every time you think you know everything you can about the character, something new and astonishing is revealed. The bittersweet romance between him and his wife and the flashes of their past together brings tears to your eyes (it did to mine) and truly touches your heart. It reminds me of the book The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, as that book talks about the need to keep the lives of the dead alive by writing and telling stories about them. The way that Ove tells stories of his wife lets us relive his life and her’s alongside them, as if it were happening in the present. Some may think that this is simply a denial of death and can take an unhealthy toll on one’s mental health, but as Tim O’Brien says, it’s a way of remembering them and keeping their spirit alive forevermore.
Regardless of what you think about how to deal with grief however, this book ‘A Man Called Ove’ is a beautiful depiction of it, and heartfelt down to the very last page. I won’t spoil the ending so let’s just say that it describes the aftertaste of a fulfilling life; one that ends in a moment of joy and bravery.
Arya.
