A Man Called Ove Didn't Impress Me

I'm finishing up A Man Called Ove, a Swedish book that has apparently been pretty popular.  There's even a movie I'm told.  It's for my book club.  I wasn't overwhelmed.  I don't think I've

gotten any great insights.  The writing isn't particularly interesting - short sentences and short words. Sort of like an adult children's book.   It does help people to understand (for those who don't) that inside gruff, introverted, rule following nitpickers (at least inside Ove) there's a decent person whose back story makes his behavior less objectionable.

I guess I also realized that I had a stereotype of Swedes being more rational and polite than the people of most other countries.  If this book is representative, I was wrong about that.

Here's a bit on death and judging from near the very end.

Chapter 39 begins

"Death is a strange thing.  People live their whole lives as if it does not exist, and yet it's often one of the great motivations for living.  Some of us, in time, become so conscious of it that we live harder, more obstinately, with more fury.  Some need its constant presence to even be aware of its antithesis.  Others become so preoccupied with it that they go into the waiting room long before it has announced its arrival.  We fear it, yet most of us fear more than anything that it may take someone other than ourselves.  For the greatest fear of death is always that it will pass us by.  And leave us there alone.
People always said that Ove was "bitter."  But he wasn't bloody bitter.  He just didn't go around grinning the whole time.  Did that mean one had to be treated like a criminal?  Ove hardly thought so.  Something inside a man goes to pieces when he has to bury the only person who ever understood him.  There is no time to heal that sort of wound."

[UPDATE Sept 10, 2019:  I found a NYT review that focused on the author.  Fredrik Backman does say that he is somewhat the model for Ove.

"A colleague . . . wrote a bog post . . .about seeing a man named Ove explode with rage while buying tickets at an art museum, until his wife intervened.
"My wife read the blog post and said, "This is what life is like with you,"  Mr. Backman said, 'I'm not very socially competent.  I'm not great at talking to people.  My wife tends to say, your volume is always at 1 or 11, never in between." 

So that makes a lot of sense, and I guess it means that there are lots of women out there married to Oves.  I'd guess the Sonjas (Ove's wife in the book) recognize this much faster than the Oves.]