Book Review: A Man Called Ove

Nowadays it’s common for movies to be based on books so it wasn’t a complete surprise when I saw my friend scrolling through movie choices for the night and I discovered that the book I was reading was already turned into a film. I have not seen the film yet as I wanted to finish the book first. So this review is solely based on my experience with reading the novel.

A Man Called Ove was a suggestion made by one of the book club members at the last meeting as she was in the mood for something “heartwarming.” Admittedly, I thought that the book was anything but [heartwarming] when I began reading it. Even when I was able to start seeing how it would potentially become heartwarming, the story felt quite heartbreaking because of the continuous unveiling of hardships the protagonist/main character Ove had gone through in life prior to the present day the story was taking place.

So if you are going through a heartbreak yourself, this would be a great book to read and cry to. With the ending being heartwarming it would also give you that comforting fuzzy feeling afterwards which would also probably help.

Personally, the story also resonated with me with themes such as being able to choose your non-blood family or being able to overcome loneliness and finding a living purpose after experiencing tremendous loss.

I do not like to spoil it for people by giving away the whole story if you have not seen the movie or read the book and you plan on doing so at some point. So I won’t go into details about the premises.

But as a reader, I will say that this was one of those books that starts to grow on you as you progress through the story. So you increasingly start reading more pages per sitting. Towards the end, I just didn’t want to put it down because I wanted to know what was going to happen. It wasn’t like the ending was unexpected, but when you get a glimpse of a heartwarming ending you want to see all of it.

I think some of it was timing too. Even though it doesn’t snow where I live, the snowy setting in the book puts me in that winter mood. And the holidays can be a time where people go through all those range of emotions of feeling lonely from being alone or the warmth of being with those you love.

So here’s to cuddling up with a nice book and a cup of hot tea this winter,

M