The only grouch you may ever love

Fredrik Backman's debut novel A Man Called Ove is a wonderfully uplifting and poignant read for the grump in us all

I have a habit of dog-earing my books. To some bibliophiles, this would be as criminal as if I'd suggested adding a few extra squiggles to the painting of the Mona Lisa. Thing is, I love quirky, poignant turns of phrases and lines of thought that have been intelligently articulated - they always make me pause mid-read. So I dog-ear them to mark the page. Later, I can always go back to those pages and enjoy those bits in one shot, without necessarily reading the whole book again - a sort of highlight reel, if you will.
Having said that, you should see my copy of Fredrik Backman's A Man Called Ove. It looks like almost every other page has been dog-eared at times. But it just goes to show why the Swedish blogger's debut novel became an instant international hit, taking the world - and especially its author - by surprise.
As you may probably be able to tell from the title, the book is about a man called Ove. A cantankerous, faultfinding, bitter man who doesn't understand people and whom people don't understand. According to him, it's because he has principles and the rest of the world doesn't. You can't argue with him there.
After all, anyone with any common sense should know that if a shop is selling two plants for 50 crowns as a promotion, there is no way in hell they can make you pay the original price of 39 crowns for one; one plant should, by logical deduction, be 25 crowns!
Ove also feels (strongly) that there is no greater brand of automobiles than the Swedish group Saab, and that once you start with a brand, you stick to it for the rest of your life. You don't go from driving a Volvo to buying a BMW - there's just no reasoning with people who do that. In other words, it's all a matter of principle.
You'd think it would be easy to dislike such a contentious man from the get-go but what you're not counting on is Ove's remarkable backstory that is gently revealed as you go on; the events that have shaped his life and made him who he is.
I cannot say too much more without giving it all away, but between multiple (almost comical) failed suicide attempts that leave Ove "distinctly un-dead", a foreign neighbour "who puts saffron in her rice" and whose two cute kids somehow charm their way into his life (think Despicable Me), and an unassailable stray cat that Ove categorically refuses to welcome into his home but which starts living there anyway - Backman has given us the perfect holiday read.
The book is littered with wonderfully relatable observations ("We always think there's time to do things with other people. Time to say things to them. And then something happens and we stand there holding on to words like 'if'") and humour is everywhere: whether in tense standoffs ("The two men submitted one another to such a long examination that either of them could have been an unusually interesting painting in a museum") or in descriptions of everyday people ("Her laughter catches him on the back foot. As if it's carbonated and someone has poured it too fast and it's bubbling over in all directions. It doesn't fit at all with the grey cement and right-angled garden paving stones. It's an untidy, mischievous laugh that refuses to go along with rules and prescriptions").
Some have found the cover art (see above) a tad confusing, and end up reading it as 'A Man Called Love' - but this is just as well. Because I dare you not to fall in love with Ove.
karen@khaleejtimes.com