"At first sight, Ove is almost certainly the grumpiest man you will ever meet. He thinks himself surrounded by idiots - neighbours who can't reverse a trailer properly, joggers, shop assistants who talk in code, and the perpetrators of the vicious coup d'etat that ousted him as Chairman of the Residents' Association. He will persist in making his daily inspection rounds of the local streets.
But isn't it rare, these days, to find such old-fashioned clarity of belief and deed? Such unswerving conviction about what the world should be, and a lifelong dedication to making it just so?
In the end, you will see, there is something about Ove that is quite irresistible…"
Oh, Ove. There are some books that you come to the end of and you just can't let the characters go. Ove is one of those characters. I don't want to go into too much detail regarding the storyline, and who Ove is and his relationships with the other characters, as I went into this novel blind, not knowing anything about it except what was written on the blurb. From the blurb, I thought it wasn't really going to be my thing, but I was SO wrong. I LOVE OVE. He is grumpy, hilarious and lovely. The novel make me laugh so hard I cried, and cry so hard everyone else in the room laughed. I defy you to read A Man Called Ove and not fall a tiny bit in love.
A Man Called Ove is out now and you can get it here:
MY GRANDMOTHER SENDS HER REGARDS AND APOLOGISES
"'Granny has been telling fairy tales for as long as Elsa can remember. In the beginning they were only to make Elsa go to sleep, and to get her to practise granny's secret language, and a little because granny is just about as nutty as a granny should be. But lately the stories have another dimension as well. Something Elsa can't quite put her finger on...'
Elsa is seven years old and different. Her grandmother is seventy-seven years old and crazy. Standing-on-the-balcony-firing-paintball-guns-at-men-who-want-to-talk-about-Jesus-crazy. She is also Elsa's best, and only, friend. At night Elsa runs to her grandmother's stories, to the Land of Almost-Awake and the Kingdom of Miamas. There, everybody is different and nobody needs to be normal.
So when Elsa's grandmother dies and leaves behind a series of letters apologizing to people she has hurt, it marks the beginning of Elsa's greatest adventure. Her grandmother's letters lead her to an apartment building full of drunks, monsters, attack dogs, and totally ordinary old crones-but also to the truth about fairytales and kingdoms and a grandmother like no other.'
So, after suffering the biggest book hangover ever after Ove, my only real option for reading another book was to jump straight into Fredrik Backman's second novel. If you have read (and loved) Ove, I am completely sure that you will love this one too - although the story unfolds more dramatically than it does in the previous novel, the style of writing is very similar, and I found characters popping up here and there that shared certain characteristics with Ove. This is not in any way a bad thing, and I found that I enjoyed those characteristics even more. Backman manages to make his characters come to life on the page, and I don't think there was a single character that I didn't love. A story that is woven through with fairy tales makes for fabulous reading - it's safe to say I am a huge Backman fan and am waiting for more!
My Grandmother Sends Her Regards and Apologises is out now and you can get it here:
**Huge thanks to the publisher for my ARC's**
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