This month’s selection is one that has been on numerous bestseller lists and is a few years old, so if you’re one of the few people who hasn’t read A Man Called Ove, feel free to stop reading now. Otherwise, please let me tell you about this wonderful novel. When I first selected this book for my monthly book club (a light fiction group which meets the second Monday of every month at 2 p.m.), I did not think I was going to like it. I’ve read enough “older-grumpy-man-learns-to-loosen-up-and-like-people-again-books” (Looking at you, Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand and The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry) to figure I knew how this one would go.
And yet it surprised me, chapter by chapter, with its heart and humor. I found myself growing attached to fussy, bossy, rigid Ove as he deals with pesky new neighbors, who give him quite a bad first impression when they flatten his mailbox with a truck. And they just keep interrupting him, needing help with backing up that same truck, rides to the hospital, and even learning to drive. Ove may be a curmudgeon, but that doesn’t mean he can’t take the time to teach someone the proper way to drive a manual shift car.
This novel made me laugh, made me think, and at the end, I cried. This book was powerful, a delight from start to finish. Ove is a fully realized character, with a vivid history that pops from the page as details are slowly revealed to show why he is so bitter and angry at the world. Please, if you have not read A Man Called Ove, pick it up. It was one of the most profoundly moving books that I have read so far in 2017, and there is a reason it is a bestseller in countries all over the world. Do yourself a favor and read this book.
Review by Shannon Wood
Adult Services Librarian
Nordonia Hills Branch Library
