A Man Called Ove: The Backman Book That Will Change How You See Your Grumpy Neighbor

Read time: 5 minutes

🎧 Listened in audio ⏱ Duration: 9 hours
📖 Translated by Henning Koch 📢 Narrated by George Newbern
Genre: Literary Fiction 🏷️ Publisher: Dreamscape Media LLC and Atria Books

Book Blurb:

Meet Ove, a curmudgeon who points at people he dislikes like burglars caught outside his window. He has staunch principles, strict routines, and a short fuse. People call him the bitter neighbor from hell, but is Ove really just bitter, or is there a sadness behind the cranky exterior? When a chatty young couple with two chatty daughters moves in next door one November morning and accidentally flattens Ove’s mailbox, it kicks off a heartwarming, often funny story about unkempt cats, unexpected friendship, and the ancient art of backing up a U-Haul. All of it will change one cranky old man, and a local residents’ association, right down to their foundations.

Let’s talk about the book:

Fredrik Backman has a theme in the books that I have read so far. There is always a form of suicide addressed. However, kudos to him for handling such a heavy topic with delicate hands.

Ove is a man who lost his wife, the only person he had in his life. Having lost his parents, and being on the spectrum, he always kept his distance from people, never having understood social nuances. His wife, however, opened up a part of him that could love in his own way. Having lost that light in his life, it was easy to understand what he was going through. However, Parvaneh, her family and their neighbours come together to bring back the light in his life. The story is about finding a beacon of light in the pitch darkness of grief.

I really adore Fredrik Backman’s writing. He manages to handle the darkest of topics with such levity, that you come out of the book not only feeling entirely warm, but also aware of the situations people around you might be in. You come out of the book wanting to make the world slightly brighter than it is already.

A special call out to Henning Koch for translating this book. While talking about authors, the translators get missed, but it is specifically because of these translators that we get to read these masterpieces. Without Henning Koch, we would never have met and fell in love with Ove. George Newbern does a fantastic job narrating the book. He brings out the raw emotions and the mental workings of Ove to such precision, it gets very easy to resonate to him. Narration is most of the joy when listening to audiobooks, and George Newbern does due justice.

If you have not read a Backman story, you truly have no idea what you are missing in life. Once you read even one of Backman’s books, I promise you it will be impossible not to catch up with the other books. I would consider it a social cause to have everyone read this book and be more aware of each other in this society.

Would I recommend it?

Absolutely, without hesitation. This is the kind of book you finish and then immediately want to hand to the crankiest person you know, because somewhere underneath that crankiness is probably an Ove of their own. Backman writes grief and depression with a gentleness that never once feels like it’s minimizing the weight of it, and then he balances it out with a found family so chaotic and loving that you forget to brace for the sad parts until they arrive anyway. It’s warm. It’s funny. It will absolutely get you in the chest at least once. A Man Called Ove earns every bit of this rating.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Book Recommendations

• My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry — Fredrik Backman If Ove wrecked you in the best way, this one hits the same found-family, grief-wrapped-in-warmth notes, just through a grandmother and granddaughter instead.

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• Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine — Gail Honeyman Another prickly, isolated protagonist whose walls come down because a few persistent, chatty people simply refuse to leave her alone. Ove would probably respect her routines.

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• The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry — Gabrielle Zevin Swap the neighborhood for a bookstore and you get the same grumpy widower turning soft once an unexpected family lands on his doorstep.

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• Britt-Marie Was Here — Fredrik Backman Technically a spinoff, following one of Ove’s own found-family members as she rebuilds her life from scratch. Read it right after Ove for the fullest effect.

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• The Door-to-Door Bookstore — Carsten Henn Another elderly man set in his ways, softened by a persistent, precocious kid who refuses to be brushed off. Swap Sweden for a small German town and Parvaneh for a nine-year-old in a yellow raincoat, and you’ve basically got Ove’s bookish cousin.

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Who’s Your Ove?

We all know one. The neighbor who scowls instead of waving, the coworker who seems to have a rule for everything, the family member everyone’s a little scared to sit next to at dinner. Ove made me think differently about every one of them. So tell me: who’s the Ove in your life, and has a book ever changed the way you looked at someone like that? Drop it in the comments, I want to hear it.

Book Links

Want to purchase this or any of your favorite books while supporting a local bookstore? Consider purchasing using the sites below. These sites work with independent local bookstore owners to fulfill your book orders. #SupportLocal

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