Martin Lalor

I found the book overrated and deeply disappointing. It leans far too heavily on clichés: the grumpy-old-man-with-a-heart-of-gold, the saintly neighbors, and the one-dimensional villains like Ove’s workplace bully. Secondary characters are often stereotypes — Jimmy reduced to a fat joke, Parvaneh flattened into a cultural foil who exists only to redeem Ove. Realism is stripped away at every turn. Ove himself isn’t just grumpy — he’s downright cruel, especially to Parvaneh, and the novel papers over that by treating her endless patience as a virtue. In real life, people don’t respond that way to bigotry or hostility. What I found most troubling, though, was how the book trivializes suicide. Ove’s repeated attempts are played almost like slapstick comedy, a “running gag” where each effort is interrupted by neighbors needing help. It reduces a serious, painful issue into a plot device and undermines the emotional weight Backman seems to be aiming for. For me, all of this made the story predictable, shallow, and manipulative — more like a sentimental fable than a novel with real insight.