A Man Called Ove

Literary fiction · Tragicomedy

First published: 2012
Print length: 295 pagesSceptre, 2015

Description

Ove is a gruff fifty-nine-year-old widower whose days are governed by strict routines, firm principles, and irritation at anyone who ignores the rules. Forced into retirement and carrying a history of grief beneath his anger, he has withdrawn into an increasingly solitary existence. Then a talkative young family moves next door and damages his mailbox, beginning a succession of unwanted encounters that repeatedly demand his practical skills and reluctant attention. Neighbors who first appear to Ove as nuisances gradually become entangled in his life, while glimpses of his past reveal how love and loss shaped his uncompromising habits. Comic collisions and quiet sadness share the novel’s neighborhood scale, turning one man’s resistance to change into a story about usefulness, friendship, and accidental community.

Reading profile

About this profile

Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).

Writing: How much attention the sentences and language require.
Ideas: How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
Structure: How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
Background knowledge: Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
Emotional intensity: Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.

Writing style

Conversational · Direct · Witty

Pace

Moderate

Tone

Hopeful · Humorous · Melancholic · Warm

Structure

Dual timeline · Nonlinear

Focus

Character · Relationships

Emotional intensity

4 / 5

Reading complexity

1–5 · higher means more demanding

Writing: 2 / 5
Ideas: 2 / 5
Structure: 3 / 5
Background knowledge: 1 / 5

Themes

AgingCommunityFriendshipGriefLoveTransformation

About Fredrik Backman

Fredrik Backman is a Swedish writer of character-centered fiction that brings comedy into close contact with grief, loneliness, and social pressure. His prose is usually direct and conversational, with brisk dialogue and sharply observed irritations opening onto more guarded forms of tenderness. He often begins with a person or group trapped inside a fixed account of events, then widens the story through backstory, shifting viewpoints, or an accumulating web of relationships. In Man Called Ove, a widower’s rigid routines are repeatedly interrupted by neighbors who need his practical help, while glimpses of his past explain the loss beneath his anger. Anxious People turns a failed bank robbery and accidental hostage situation into a farce driven by conversation, using a crowded apartment to disclose the captives’ private crises and the investigators’ strained family bond. Beartown works on a broader scale. Its small-town hockey culture links individual loyalties to institutional pressure, following how a violent crime divides teenagers, parents, teammates, and neighbors.

Anxious People Apple Books

Book details

For the print edition listed above.

Publisher: Sceptre
Language: English
ISBN: 9781444775815

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