I found this book after I Googled a quote I saw someone use on their post. “People said Ove saw the world in black and white. But she was colour. All the colour he had.”

Growing up primarily reading love stories and being a closet romantic, I was instantly attracted to such an intense affirmation and was curious as to how A Man Called Ove by Fredrick Backman would be different from the flurry of romantic novels I cherished throughout my childhood. To my absolute delight, this book was nothing like what I had read earlier and my, hopefully, more emotionally mature self fell completely in love with this book and the character of Ove.

The protagonist is like no other romantic hero. He is a bitter and grumpy 59 year old man who likes other humans as much as one would like to watch their most favourite thing get ruined in front of their eyes. He does not trust anyone or anything and is someone who is truly stuck in the past. We are introduced to Ove in the first chapter and Backman presents him while he goes to buy a new computer. The salesman shows him an iPad and he is absolutely convinced that the salesman is making him buy just a screen and would charge him for the keyboard separately. He simply just wanted a normal computer and the salesman showed him everything but, according to Ove. However, through the course of these instances we are made aware that Ove’s wife, Sonja made sense of the things Ove seemed to be incapable of understanding about the rest of the world. Sonja was the love of his life and Sonja loved Ove earnestly and did not mind him or his eccentricities. The limited interaction that Ove had with his neighbours was only because of Sonja, arguably, Sonja made Ove human.
However, Ove’s life had lost all sense of meaning and colour as Sonja had passed away and he was left all alone with his anxieties and bitterness. Ove desired just one thing through the course of the novel, to kill himself so that he could be reunited with his love.

He tried innumerable ways to end his life but ultimately something went wrong or he was interrupted. He would get ready in his best clothes and prepare to die because when he meets Sonja again, she should not have to complain about his appearance. However, through the course of these novels and interruptions, Ove has to make a lot of choices and decisions which he would not under normal circumstances. But he does, thinking of what his wife would expect him to do. Ove is forced to do things he hated and he has to build relationships with his neighbours and the scruffy cat and he even begins to care for them.

The climax of the novel, which comes almost at the far end, forces the readers to feel both sadness and joy. The simple man, Ove, makes everyone feel such complex feelings that although he has all the virtues and characteristics of an anti-hero, he turns out to be one of the most romantic figures in this gamut.

The almost Boo Radley-esque figure, Ove, who just wanted to be reunited with his late wife, ends up making everyone around him and the readers admire him. Admire him for his undying love, fearless adherence to what he believes is right, and compassion. For someone who believed his life was devoid of any colour which only his wife brought, he learnt to colour his life himself. Although they may have been just a few basic colours, it was surely not just black and white anymore. This book is not just a tale about the love shared by a man and his late wife, it is also a story about a man who painfully has to learn how to live life without his wife’s presence, although she is always present in his thoughts.

“To love someone is like moving into a house,” Sonja used to say. “At first you fall in love in everything new, you wonder every morning that this is one’s own, as if they are afraid that someone will suddenly come tumbling through the door and say that there has been a serious mistake and that it simply was not meant to would live so fine. But as the years go by, the facade worn, the wood cracks here and there, and you start to love this house not so much for all the ways it is perfect in that for all the ways it is not. You become familiar with all its nooks and crannies. How to avoid that the key gets stuck in the lock if it is cold outside. Which floorboards have some give when you step on them, and exactly how to open the doors for them not to creak. That’s it, all the little secrets that make it your home.”

I choose to add certain sections from the book in this review because of its beautiful ideas such as this, which also add to the aura that this book creates is absolutely enchanting. It is not only Backman’s mastery of the creation of his quirky characters but also his simple, yet powerful use of language and the feelings that its forces unto the readers.

A Man Called Ove is a book which makes me believe in love in a confusing world which surrounds us all, and I highly recommend this book to all!

-by Ishana Ghosh