“Sonja said once that to understand men like Ove and Rune, one had to understand from the very beginning that they were men caught in the wrong time. Men who only required a few simple things from life, she said. A roof over their heads, a quiet street, the right make of car, and a woman to be faithful to. A job where you had a proper function. A house where things broke at regular intervals, so you always had something to tinker with.”

I couldn’t start with anything else to review this book. This one paragraph pretty much sums up those two characters. Whatever they do in this book, good or bad, it’s because of this. One peculiar thing about Ove is that he never liked someone. He just disliked a little less. 

This book is a love story. A story about friends. A story about neighbors. A story about how simple things matter in life and how they shape up ones life. It’s a story about a man called Ove and his wife Sonja. Their love story forms the crux of this book. It spread in between the chapters and not continuous. Because of this, Every other chapter, I had to pause. Those words choked me and flooded my eyes. It breaks your heart. The very next chapter made me go ROFL. A roller-coaster ride which ends somewhere in the second last chapter. 

I tried to find flaws in this book. I couldn’t. Maybe because of the love story I overlooked them. Maybe it’s really well written. The characters in this book are weird and crazy. Ove will remind you of a Pixar movie “Up” and a TV show “Monk”. The Others easily stand out from the crowd. Their craziness, their foolishness, their stupidity, their love keeps you engrossed in the story. You wish that such characters were around you.

I wished there was more. More of Ove.