At the start of the novel A Man Called Ove, I didn’t think I was going to like it. The beginning scene of Ove yelling at someone in the service industry probably wasn’t the move to get me immediately hooked. I didn’t feel like reading about a grumpy, mean old man, and the writing didn’t seem like anything special. But then I suddenly found myself laughing out loud. So it was deceptively charming, and I did enjoy reading the novel, but it didn’t make a profound impact on me.
Ove’s downright meanness wasn’t always funny. I know some people similar to Ove, and being around them isn’t fun. I did sometimes feel like his negativity was played to the extremes for comedy’s sake, which didn’t always work for me. I preferred his subtle eccentricities rather than the outrageous acts like hitting a clown, yelling at people trying to do their job because of his own ignorance, refusing to help a dying cat that was within help, or locking a journalist in a garage (though the latter was kinda funny). But I think leaving out these outrageously contrived bits would have made Ove more endearing, and it would’ve made more sense to me why Parvaneh, the new nextdoor neighbor, got so attached to him.
Some things that didn’t make sense to me:
- Ove’s mailbox got crushed close to the beginning of the novel, and over halfway through the book, he still hadn’t fixed it. With Ove’s fix-it-yourself-or-you’re-a-dud attitude and his pathological need for order and efficiency, it didn’t make sense to me why he didn’t fix his mailbox immediately. The plot point was used to introduce the mailboy, but it didn’t fit with Ove’s character.
- The book made him seem at least a decade older than 59. Revealing his age was definitely jarring for me. I understand everyone ages differently, but the age just didn’t fit.
- The novel was structured with flashbacks, and I often found it difficult to reconcile the younger Ove with the older Ove, since they sometimes seemed like two different people. Although the author explained why and how Ove became the way he is as the flashbacks progressed and it increasingly made more sense to me, it was still enough of an obstruction that took me out of the flow of the story. I think this is a fault of mine rather than a fault of the story or character development.
Again I feel as though my review is more negative than my general feeling toward the novel. I really did appreciate the story, enjoyed all the characters (most of the time), and thought the majority was charming, heartwarming fun. I don’t think the story will stick with me, though.
