Book Review 1: A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman

Fredrik Backman: A Man Called Ove

Genres: Contemporary, Light Humor

Reading Level: Adult 

Setting: Modern Sweden

Published: 2014

Page Count: 337 (Paperback)

Content Warnings: Suicide, Miscarriage 

Rating: ★★★★✩ (4.0 out of 5)

One of my New Year’s resolutions for 2025 was to start writing serious book reviews again–not because anyone particularly cares about what I personally have to say about books, but simply because it brings me joy to do. After my mental health took a slight dip towards the end of 2024, I decided I needed to do something that was going to bring a little joy back into my life, and it needed to be something that I decided to do by myself, for myself. When I settled on choosing to write book reviews again, ironically the book I decided to start with was Fredrik Backman’s

A Man Called Ove. The irony of the fact that this book is about a depressed middle-aged man finding joy in his life again and escaping his desire to kill himself is not lost on me. I promise it wasn’t intentional–just one of life’s funny coincidences. 

I would not necessarily recommend this book to a reader who is seriously in a dark or dangerous place at the time of reading. While it is surprisingly light-hearted given the subject matter, and it has a positive, inspiring message, it does have several chapters that describe the titular main character Ove’s attempts at taking his life. Some readers may find that these scenes are triggering, so proceed with caution when approaching this novel and use discretion about where your own mental health stands before reading. 

One of the things I particularly enjoy about this novel is the simplistic, light, and sometimes even humorous way that the entire story is approached. It would have been so easy for Backman to write an overly heavy or dark, or just downright depressing, novel given that this book is about a man contemplating suicide after the death of his beloved wife–which comes after several other tragedies in Ove’s life, including the death of both his parents, a fire that burns down the home that he built for himself, the miscarriage and permanent, life-altering injuries of his wife following a bus crash, and his best friend (frenemy) Rune’s progression of Alzheimer’s. All of this is very serious and very sad. Backman so easily could have made this story turgidly depressing, and I don’t know that it would have been as enjoyable to read, or as accessible as the text currently written is. Instead, he chooses deliberately to focus on the lighthearted aspects of the story. Because A Man Called Ove isn’t really about a man who wants to kill himself. It’s about a man who finds new reasons every day not to kill himself. It’s about hope–not despair. So instead of a story or morose scene detailing the darkness of depression and hopelessness, we get chapters of a stereotypically crotchety older man begrudgingly adopting a cat and nursing it back to health, befriending his new neighbors and teaching them how to drive, taking in a gay teenager who was thrown out of his home by a homophobic father, fixing people’s bikes for them, saves his friend Rune from being put into an elder care home against his and his wife’s will, and generally unlearning some of his own internalized prejudices about modern society whilst figuring out how to keep living in it. Then in turn, the people in Ove’s small residential community unlearn some of their prejudices about him being nothing more than the cranky old man who lives next door. 

Some people might be put off by some of Ove’s internalized prejudices, such as some of the outdated language that he uses to describe Misrad–the gay teen he takes into his household–the way he approaches his neighbor Jimmy being overweight, or his referral to Parvaneh as being “foreign” consistently. But a large part of this story revolves around the fact that he actually has no issue or ill-will towards any of these people; Ove is just old, doesn’t know the right way to approach or speak to people to fit in with them, and generally gets better as his character progresses, and he goes on to form strong bonds with all these people. For Backman to show that people are capable of unlearning prejudices and becoming better, he has to show that they have them in the first place, which is the case of Ove in this story. 

Other readers may find that the flashback chapters about Ove’s life with his wife Sonja before her untimely death border on the Manic Pixie Dreamgirl trope, as these chapters seem to consistently capture Sonja in a way that makes her seem perfect, or that her marriage to Ove had no issues other than those that were outside their own control (such as the bus accident that caused Sonja to miscarriage and require the use of a wheelchair for the rest of her life). However, I think these chapters are written this way for a reason. If you read between the lines, you do see that there are cracks, areas where if they went into a bit more detail, you would see that Ove and Sonja’s life and marriage weren’t actually perfect. Backman just isn’t going into detail about those parts of the story, because Ove isn’t thinking about them. It is written from the perspective of a man looking backward at his wife and their life after she has already passed. People always tend to glorify the dead and, especially in this situation, where Ove is struggling to move on from the grief of Sonja’s death and becomes severely depressed. He is glorifying both her out of grief, and he is glorifying his past life because he is suicidal now and looking to use losing Sonja (who he considers the last good thing in his life) as an excuse not to keep living. In this context, it makes sense that the flashback chapters are very rose-tinted. It is also worth noting that once the story progresses, and Ove finds a purpose in life again–saving Rune from being taken away, and the development of his paternal-esque bond with new neighbor Parvaneh and her kids-the flashback chapters altogether eventually stop, representing how Ove is no longer fixating on his grief and loss, and rather he is looking forward to his future. 

There is a simplicity to the style that this book is written in. It is very quick and easy to read. This was

also likely done intentionally on Backman’s part. Many of the flashback chapters talk about how Sonja was the reader and the creative one in their marriage. Ove was analytical and liked numbers, things that are very straightforward, and this book is about Ove, so it is understandable that it would be written in a simple nature that reflects his character. 

I liked the cast of characters and the representation that appears in the story. Parvaneh is Iranian and has a biracial family. Misrad is gay, and we also have a plus-sized side character, and there is representation of a character with Alzheimer’s. It isn’t groundbreaking when it comes to a diverse cast of characters or the way that the diverse characters are represented, but again, the book is from the perspective of a cranky, older white man, so the way it is written makes sense in that lens. Plus, one of the major characters is a cat, so obviously that’s a plus. Overall, it was a solid, lighthearted read, and it is likely to bring a lot of readers out of a reading slump, if you find that you’re in one. 

Book review 1 of 5,000 lifetime goal