A Man Called Ove

During this November I have finally dove back into reading for personal enjoyment. Well ya’ll are probably think: “why did you dive back into reading, you love reading right? What are you keeping from us!” Lol. My humor is terrible.

So well I have to sadly admit that I didn’t read anything really for the last seven months. Which is mostly due to the libraries being closed, and my overall disappointment with the most recent books I had read until now. But that does not matter because I am reading now. In other words my inner bookworm is back!

Some background: so around last year I did a literary analysis course for English, and because I am feeling bored, and did not want to edit an essay, I will be using my very rusty literary analysis skills in this post. So please do not judge how bad they are. lol

Now onto the post.

The first book I read this month was: A Man Man Called Ove, by Fredrik Backman; which is the book I will be discussing about today.

The book is about a very grumpy man named Ove, who is in his late 50s. Ove is a pain to everyone he interacts with, thanks to his short temper, grumpy and bitter attitude, and staunch principles.

Ove lives alone, in solitude; he has lived this way ever since his wife has passed away. He also, sadly wakes up every morning wanting to end his life. But for some reason this never goes as planned, because something always distracting happens, which is the irony of it.

But one day everything changes for him when his new neighbors move in to the house next to him. His new neighbors are Parvaneh(who is very pregnant), her husband Patrick, and their two little girls. This small family announces their arrival by flattening Ove’s mailbox, much Ove’s annoyance.

After this rather awkward interaction, it is pretty obvious that Parvaneh is amused by Ove’s moody and not so friendly personality. She isn’t even phased when Ove is clearly being rude.

One of the things that I noticed about Ove is the fact that he has really hard time saying no, even though he isn’t happy about it, he ends up doing it. So throughout the book there are many moments where Parvaneh asks for a favor such as ride, or even teaching her how to drive, which Ove would clearly say no to, but he agrees to do it. Also Ove overtime changes, becomes more open to other people, and also begins to find reasons to live.

Before I spoil this book completely, and ruin my readers chance of enjoying this book without knowing what is going to happen. So I will now get into what I thought of this book, the characters, etc.

The book itself was pretty good in my opinion. For some reason books on people finding their life again, or finding a purpose to live, have always attracted me. Also I like a character development where the main character changes for the better. My favorite character by far is Parvaneh; I mean how can you not like a strong minded female character, I mean you can’t. Also I love the fact that she brings out the worst and best out of Ove, and is not frightened or angered by his grumpiness and bitter attitude.

The themes in this book are pretty simple, yet important: love, family, grief, and friendship.

Would I recommend this book? Yes!!! I wouldn’t recommend though if you are sensitive to topics such as grief and suicide. Which is why I would give it a 14+ rating, but overall I think most would enjoy this book, I mean I did.

Well before I end this post, very abruptly, I would say that I might do more posts like these. I don’t want my blog to become a full on book review blog, or a blog that just contains posts about books, but I also think I should shake things up a little, and post other things other than essays. Also these kinds of posts are fun! So why not. I really need to end this!

Thank you for reading:

-Dreamer