A Man Called Ove

by Fredrik Backman, 2012 

I suppose this would be called a comic novel. A lot of things happen that readers can laugh at. But humour relies on context and individual reaction, and so did my response to this book.

  I started read it in preparation for a trip to Scandinavia. I thought that it would show everyday life in contemporary Sweden in an entertaining way, and for that it was good. Set among a group of neighbours in a modern suburb, it describes directly and inferentially a small community and the minor or major issues that come up. Immigration, queer kids, bureaucratic obstruction, new technology are set against an underlying story of love and death in a cold climate. It shows a modern Sweden as part of 20^th century Euro-American culture, with a few specific Nordic quirks. It contains some passages of compassionate writing and empathy that are quite lovely, such as the poignant story of the relationship between Ove and his neighbour, expressed in the history of their car ownership.

  But I didn’t like Fredrik Backman’s writing. Essentially, this is a story about a grumpy old guy with a heart of gold. It’s a sentimental cliché. It’s a well-done sentimental cliché with some modernizing touches, and I can see why it’s popular. But for me it seldom rises above the cliché.

  And it is undermined by incidents that are over-done or that don’t ring true. The uniform white-shirted, heartless bureaucrats, for example, are cartoons. While it might be true that many employees providing government services are rule-bound and unfeeling, they are all human beings with individual interests and frustrations. It doesn’t make Ove’s story any more sympathetic to make them all automatons. And the story of the gay guy who comes to stay in Ove’s house because his father can’t deal with his homosexuality seems completely contrived, the kind of thing that someone would imagine when they don’t know any gay men’s coming out stories. Worse than contrived, it’s a plot device to bring a little more poignancy and humor into the story line. And then there are the cute kids who get through Ove’s grumpiness. And the stray cat that adopts Ove and lets him show his hidden warmth. Even, perhaps especially, his saintly wife. It’s all too much.

  Backman also reduces the text to very simple, elemental declarative sentences or half sentences, presumably to represent Ove’s way of thinking, which is also very elemental. This is effective in making a reader see how Ove thinks, but after a few chapters, it’s trite.

  What's critically annoying here is the mix of psychological insight presented in simple language offset by contrived sentimentality in an exaggerated style that is supposed to represent Ove's straightforward thinking. Perhaps if a few of the chapters were presented as short stories, this would be an interesting character study. But it is not enlightening when it turns him into a caricature or when character development relies on revelations that are little more than sentimental hooks.

  Perhaps I’m being as narrow-minded and judgemental as Ove. Perhaps that’s why I didn’t much like the book. But for me, it’s the worst kind of popular sentimentality, and it is not saved by the few insightful passages.