I think this is the best book I've ever read. Funny and beautiful and sad -- all tear inducing. That's the problem with reading. You read a really good book and get all teary-eyed and you can't see to get past the funny, beautiful, sad pages. At least when it's a movie, the movie goes on. Or an audio book.
But I read the book. My friend Lou handed the book to me after our walking group on Tuesday, November 22. Her only caveat was that I return the book to the library before December 5th. (Thank you, Lou!)
I am not a particularly fast reader, but this book I finished this morning -- two days after receiving it. Yes, it's that good.
A Man Called Ove (by Fredrik Backman, translated by Henning Koch) is about a difficult, lonely man who has lost the only person who ever understood him, his wife Sonja. He has decided to commit suicide and join her. Such a simple, honest decision. One would think.
But he is surrounded by humans. Totally incompetent, treacherous humans. These humans, completely innocent though they may be, inevitably bumble and stumble their way into his life and interfere with his plans.
Ove's attitude toward everything and everyone except his Sonja is summed up in the following paragraph. He's driving the everything and everyone in his Saab.
"Ove looks at the group assembled around him, as if he's been kidnapped and taken to
a parallel universe. For a moment he thinks about swerving off the road, until he realizes
that the worst-case scenario would be that they all accompanied him into the afterlife.
After this insight he reduces his speed and increases the gap significantly between his
car and the one in front."
Backman's (or the translator's, I'm not sure who to credit here) language is pristine. He employs Hemingway's mot juste to say the most with the least and best words. And interestingly, anyway to me, he tells much of his story in present tense. The present part of the story. The rest he tells in the more commonly used past tense. (I know. I know. Only you grammar Nazis will even notice.)
Ove's present is explained as we read, discovering his past. As clearly and gracefully as a river winding its way through the countryside to the sea. And as inevitably.
I finished this book with my own cat annoyance snuggling in the throw on my legs (as long as I didn't try to pet him. My cat doesn't like to be petted. He bites. Rotten cat.)
Definitely Five Stars out of Five!
