Redheaded Reviews: A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman

Just what does it take to kill yourself in peace and quiet?

Ove's wife died six months ago and while he is not a sentimental man he was just forced to retire from his job and now he has no job to go to and no wife to take care of. His day consists of getting up at a quarter to six, drinking his coffee and making a tour of the neighborhood. He takes his notebook and writes down the license plates of those in the guest slots because they are only allowed to stay so long. Any longer and he will report them. He also locks up the bikes that are found outside of the bike shed. The dog across the street is peeing on his flagstones and he is trying to figure out what to do with that as well as the stray cat hanging about his place. He is a man with no purpose in life and for a man like Ove that is death. He might as well go and join Sonja in heaven. So he sets out to do just that.

But things have a way of interfering with his plans. His new next-door neighbor the pregnant Parvaneh with her lanky idiot husband Patrick and their two daughters are the first to stick their noses into his business. Patrick takes out his mailbox trying to back a trailer (illegally) into the side of their house. Before he can do more damage Ove insists on doing it himself to the happiness of Parveneh who also thinks her husband is an idiot but loves him anyway.

Parveneh guilts him into looking into his old once friend Anita and Rune's radiator that is leaking. Rune has Alzheimer's and the Home Health Service, it looks like, is coming soon to take him away to a home since Anita has MS and they deem her unfit to take care of him. Rune and Ove used to be friends. Ove drives Saabs and Rune drove Volvos. But then Rune got a BMW and that was the straw that broke the camel's back on the friendship for Ove because you just couldn't reason with someone who drove a BMW and because he didn't understand leaving a car you had been loyal to for years. So because Ove goes and fixes her radiator he stays alive another day.

It's my opinion that the funny Parvaneh figures out what Ove is up to and sets out to rescue him. But she has help from unexpected places. Ove is a curmudgeon of the worst sorts. Some people may find it hard to get into the book at first because of that. I didn't but that may be because I have a bit of the curmudgeon in me and my father is a first-rate one so I really related to it. This book is a hilarious look at a simple honest man who says little but does a lot. I highly recommend this book.

Quotes

He must be close to six and a half feet tall. Ove feels an instinctive skepticism towards all people taller than six feet; the blood can’t quite make it all the way up to the brain.

-Fredrik Backman (A Man Called Ove p 15)

Ove can’t understand people who long to retire. How can anyone spend their whole life longing for the day when they become superfluous? Wandering about, a burden on society, what sort of man would ever wish for that? Staying at home, waiting to die. Or even worse: waiting for them to come and fetch you and put you in a home. Being dependent on other people to get to the toilet. Ove can’t think of anything worse.

-Fredrik Backman (A Man Called Ove p 24-5)

Ove, only a swine thinks size and strength are the same thing.

-Fredrik Backman (A Man Called Ove p 38)

It’s a strange thing, becoming an orphan at age sixteen. To lose your family long before you’ve had time to create your own to replace it. It’s a very specific sort of loneliness .

-Fredrik Backman (A Man Called Ove p 71)

He’d discovered that he liked houses. Maybe mostly because they were understandable. They could be calculated and drawn on paper. They did not leak if they were watertight; they did not collapse if they were properly supported. Houses were fair, they gave you what you deserved. Which, unfortunately, was more than you could say about people.

-Fredrik Backman (A Man Called Ove p 90)

A BMW! How can you reason with a human being like that? How?

-Fredrick Backman (A Man Called Ove p 232)

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 perfection, 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.

-Fredrik Backman (A Man Called Ove p 305-6)

Death is a strange thing. People live their whole lives as if it does not exist, and yet it’s often one of the great 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 pressure to even be aware of its antithesis. Others become so preoccupied with it that they go into the waiting room long before it has been announced its arrival. We fear it, yet most of us fear more than anything that it may take someone other than ourselves. For the greatest fear of death is always that it will pass us by. And leave us there alone.

-Fredrik Backman (A Man Called Ove p 325)

One of the most painful moments in a person’s life probably comes when there is more to look back on than ahead. And when time no longer lies ahead of one, other things have to be lived for. Memories, perhaps. Afternoons with someone’s hand clutched in one’s own. The fragrance of flower beds in fresh bloom. Sundays in a café. Grandchildren, perhaps. One finds a way of living for the sake of someone else’s future.

-Fredrik Backman (A Man Called Ove p 325-6)