A Man Called Ove

This is by far one of my favorite books in 2021. In A Man Called Ove, Fredrik Backman—a one time fork-lift operator in a Swedish supply chain—introduces us to the stereotypical curmudgeon, Ove, as he tries to buy an "eePAd" from some pesky, hipster sales representative.

Ove is a man grieving the loss of his wife and, in a deeper way, angry that he was dealt a sour hand by life. In his younger days, he was expecting a child with his wife Sonja prior to a horrible bus accident in Spain. This accident, caused by a drunken bus driver, crippled Sonja from the waist-down and took their baby. Later in life, Sonja was diagnosed with terminal cancer and left Ove alone in the world. Thus, the story revolves around Ove wishing to kill himself to be with his wife but being comically interrupted in each suicide attempt by his noisome neighbors.

Ove is a man of defined principles—things just ought to work a certain way, people ought to drive a straight transmission and pick Saab over Volvo and certainly over a damned Audi or BMW. For Ove, the younger generations are lost in a morass of video games, junk food, and laziness. While he is outwardly hateful toward many of his neighbors, Backman helps us understand how his attitude in life is shaped by a worldview wherein he was stripped of his most cherished possession—his wife.

There's an interesting dimension here wherein Ove could be compared to Arjuna, the principle character in The Hindu epic The Bhagavad Gita. Arjuna is in the midst of a civil war that involves many of his family members. He is reluctant to fight in the battle against his own family. Krishna, an avatar of Lord Vishnu, appears before Arjuna and helps him to understand his duty (dharma) in life and convinces him that he must continue against his won inclinations to fulfill his duty. In a larger sense, Krishna tries to persuade Arjuna that when individuals shy away from their defined duties in life it can, in the aggregate, lead to social ill and social decay.

Likewise, Ove wants to end his life and exit a world that, for him, is filled with misery and longing for his deceased wife. Although he does not have any radical intervention by a spiritual figure or god, one could argue that Ove is trying to run away from his duty in life to help others and is actively prevented from doing so. In other words, Ove has a defined duty in the temporal plain of existence that he must fulfill before exiting his body into the spiritual realm. For Arjuna that meant prosecuting a war that would in all likelihood kill members of his extended family but in a broader sense preserve social order. In Ove's case, this means being a presence for his neighbors—an Iranian refugee and her Swedish husband, an elderly woman whose husband struggles with Alzheimer's, a gay youth whose father has kicked him out of the house, and an obese neighbor who is relatively helpless. Ove is instrumental in fixing a number of issues in the lives of each neighbor and, by the end of the story, he dies peacefully having fulfilled what he was meant to accomplish.

In The Bhagavad Gita, Krishna informed Arjuna that in life individuals must fulfill their dharma but they cannot expect any immediate gratification or reward in this life. In fact, a devout Hindu in Krishna's interpretation should never strive to seek material or emotional reward in this life, but always look to fulfill their dharma which, in turn, will supply them with quantities of good karma. This accumulation of karma can either result in a better station in the rebirth cycle or, if one strives hard enough, a release from the rebirth cycle through moksha.

While Ove certainly does not believe in reincarnation, nor is he setting about trying to fulfill a spiritual purpose, he does hew to a set of principles that Krishna would have found admirable. Primarily, Ove was selfless and willing to help others at his own expense. As a young man he saved a child from a burning house despite the fact that doing so would very much imperil his chances at saving his own house from the fire's spread. Later in life he saved a man who had fallen onto a train track and actively shied away from receiving an acclaim or admiration for doing something that, for him, was "common sense." Further, although Ove was incredibly rich (he had about 11.5 million Swedish crowns in his bank account) he sought to use that wealth to make the world a better place rather than gratify his own desires through materialism or hedonism.

This is a very thought-provoking book and one that calls into question or rapid judgments of people based on limited information. What do we really know about curmudgeons in our own lives? What lies beyond that rough exterior? Ove is a good starting place to think about those questions and our larger assumptions about others.

Highly recommended!

At the beginning, I just could not understand the relationship between Ove and Parvaneh. It looks wired. Parvaneh is active and Ove passive. Parvaneh is always asking and Ove always giving. It was unbalanced. I did not know why Ove allowed her to get into his life. Maybe Ove liked Parvaneh because her personality likes his deceased wife Sonja? Maybe Parvaneh knew this and took the advantage of him? Or did Parvaneh love Ove, not the father-and-daughter’s love, but lovers’ love? It made little sense to me.

Until one day I suddenly understand why Ove could have this relationship with Parvaneh -- he wanted to be useful, too.

Ove lost his wife and then his job. He did not have any children or relatives. His friend had Alzheimer’s disease. The world dumped him. He was USELESS. This is the worst thing could happen to a human being. We are so hungry for the feeling of importance; we are craving for being needed -- being needed by family, by colleges, by friends and by the society. Even for kids, they want your attention. If they could not get it, they make a fuss to attract your attention.

Parvaneh knew that. So she asked Ove for help, starting from small things like borrowing a ladder to giving her a ride to acting as a grandfather to her kids. Slowly, she broke the ice in Ove’s heart, gave him reasons to be alive because they NEED him. She used her action, but not words, to tell him that he is useful and important. What a smart woman!

Ove was a miserable man, but he was lucky to meet Sonja and Parvaneh.

Here are two paragraphs I love so much:

A few mornings later Ove walked past the neighbor’s house and saw the elderly man feeding the birds in the company of a little boy. A grandchild of his, Ove realized. He watched them surreptitiously through the bedroom window. The way the older man and the boy spoke in low voices with each other, as if they were sharing some great secret. It reminded him of something.

“Now, you listen to me,” says Ove calmly while he carefully closes the door. “You’ve given birth to two children and quite soon you’ll be squeezing out a third. You’ve come here from a land far away and most likely you fled war and persecution and all sorts of other nonsense. You’ve learned a new language and got yourself an education and you’re holding together a family of obvious incompetents. And I’ll be damned if I’ve seen you afraid of a single bloody thing in this world before now.”