When we first started reading this book, someone posted on the Facebook group – “Ove really needs to join Tough Guy Book Club”. Perhaps I didn't meet people enough like Ove in my life to make him relatable? Maybe I’m too much like Ove and I’m just being a bit grumpy? Either way the impact of this book seems to completely depend on the reader. They saw Ove filling the gap left by the neighbour's hapless husband and his moral code having a positive impact in unexpected ways. They saw more meaning in the interactions between the characters. Perhaps it's like role playing redemption. It gave them the ability to recognise and laugh at people and events that had impacted them in some way. To see him as the soft in the center prickly pear as he does goes around doing terrible things.įor other readers in the chapter, the book offered more. I feel like the reader is being asked to do the same. The kid with the bike is keen to hang out even after Ove locks up his bike. The neighbour brings gifts after he abuses them in the drive. A long suffering wife is protective of him as he destroys the closest relationships to them. I find it strange how accommodating characters are in this book. His strict moral code made him a self-righteous in his hounding of other people.

The lack of empathy and self awareness meant his hatred spilled onto everyone else. As things were taken from him and he lost the ability to fight, he became more bitter. But he is also a man who values honesty above all else. At the start of the book he was an arsehole, but the end he was slightly less of an arsehole. I just couldn't bring myself to like Ove in any way and knowing his past did not help me come around. Bureaucrats, personal tragedy, misguided lessons from dad are all artificially grafted into the present day story to build tension and justify Ove as a person. The story is split into present day challenges to Ove's grumpiness, broken up by anecdotes from his past to explain his terrible behaviour. The only surprise is how little Ove changes. Like a whodunit which is revealed too early, we read the book knowing the ending. Roll out the supporting cast of a feisty and persistent neighbour, the wayward kid who needs a father figure and a self-similar friend for a predictable coming of old age story. In the first few pages it's clear Ove is the archetypal curmudgeon and he's going to spend the entirety of the book coming good.

A man called ove similar books