Why a Booktrail?
2000s: A grumpy Swedish man likes the quiet life but when the noisy neighbours move in, things change. Ove is not happy and he has plans
A Man Called Ove
What you need to know before your trail
If you were known as the ‘bitter neighbour from hell’, chances are that people would keep their distance as you live in your solitary world. Ove likes this set up – he points at people he doesn’t like, has a strict routine and a short fuse.
But Ove is hiding a sadness – he might be grumpy but he’s a lovable grump if you got to know him. But it just might be that the chatty and boisterous couple next door are the ones to shake up Ove’s quiet world and Ove, theirs.
Sometimes the most unlikely people can have an impact on your life in ways you would never expect.
Travel Guide
If Sweden held a competition for the grumpiest man in the country, then Ove would win hands down. His world is a quiet one and only he lives there with his memories and ghosts.
He points at the neighbours, seems rude and aggressive and is rather overbearing. Oh and he loves everything in its place and for people to follow rules. He’s the man who has never owned an alarm clock as he gets up at the same time every morning and that’s just how things are. He gets up early to inspect the street moaning that only some people get up as early as he does as the others don’t care. He is “a middle aged man who expects the worthless world outside to disappoint him.”
But is everything as it seems?
How do you get to know your neighbours if you’ve built a wall around you so high that no one can see over it. A wall so thick no one can knock it down. but that noisy family next door find more than one way.
Ove as he changes throughout the book takes us all on a journey – from Grumpyville to somewhere rather different but its the stops along the way, the humourous pick ups that make the journey so much fun –
Ove on jogging –
“Is it really necessary to dress up as a fourteen-year-old Romanian gymnast in order to be able to do it?”
Ove on cats –
“It had half a tail and only one ear, Patches of fur were missing here and there as if someone had pulled it out in handfuls. Not a very impressive fellow”
Ove on life –
“Loving someone is like moving into a house. At first you fall in love with all the new things, amazed every morning that all this belongs to you….
Then over the years the walls become weathered, the wood splinters here and there, and you start to love that house not so much because of all its perfections, but rather for its imperpections.
This is a small community with its church, shop, streets full of nice houses and calm surroundings . It’s never named but since the author is from Älvsjö in Stockholm, we’ve set the booktrail there and looked around it through the eyes of a man named Ove.
Where Next?
