I never once felt like I was being pulled back and forth in the timeline, or emotionally manipulated, because Backman knew just when to push, and when to back away. Ove, stick-in-the-mud as he may be, feels disconnected and lost – who can’t relate to that? And he finds, in his new neighbours, new purpose (mostly to tell them how they’re doing it all wrong) – who can’t relate to that, too?Īs Ove’s relationship with his new neighbours develops, so unfolds his backstory, one so heart-wrenching and wonderful and evocative that it sings in perfect harmony with the rest of the novel.

He’s managed to make the old man’s cynicism and indignation endearing. By the end of A Man Called Ove, I’d used up half a box of tissues, and my cheeks, my chin, and my shirt front were all wet, too.īackman is uniquely skilled at the art of getting the reader to care more than they thought they would. And then it happened again, a little further on. And then, about half way through, my eyes got a bit wet. I was sending snaps of the funniest bits to my friends by page twelve. I was howling with laughter from page one. Based on his pitch, they said the book had “no commercial potential”, and that Ove was too unlikeable, too much of a Debbie Downer. A lonely old guy trying to off himself? Complete with wacky neighbours and hijinks? Indeed, Backman had trouble finding a publisher at first. Look, I know this doesn’t sound like the stuff of great comic novels. When they mess up his plans to die, he stubbornly refuses to accept the divine intervention, and makes a new plan… until it happens again. Ove finds them bothersome and tiresome and just about every other -some adjective you can imagine a grumpy old man throwing at a couple of kids just trying to find their way in the world. Parvaneh is a pregnant mother of two, and Patrick is her partner who really struggles with parking. When the newcomers knock over his mailbox trying to back in their trailer, he just about blows a gasket. Ove has always lived by a set of pragmatic principles and strict routines. As fate would have it, on the day of his planned departure from this mortal coil, an exuberant young family moves in next door. Lacking any purpose or intention for the rest of his life, he plans to die by suicide. He’s still mourning the loss of his wife, and recently found himself forced into early retirement. It begins with an especially-curmudgeonly old-before-his-time 59-year-old man, called Ove (in case you missed it).

This English language edition – which has sold over three million copies around the world, by the way – was translated by Henning Koch.

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A man called ove cover