Books Like A Man Called Ove

More grumps with tender hearts and a few people worth breaking routine for.

Ove goes to buy a computer and takes the missing keyboard as a personal affront. You can imagine how he feels when the new neighbors damage his mailbox. Then Parvaneh starts asking him for help, and the man who would like to be left alone turns out to be somebody you’d want living next door.

If you miss the pleasure of watching Ove get involved against his better judgment, start with Backman’s Anxious People. For another older man with plenty of opinions about how things are run, go straight to Hendrik Groen’s diary.

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01
Anxious People
by Fredrik Backman
The bank is cashless. The robber finds that out too late and flees to an apartment viewing, where the prospective buyers prove to be hard work even as hostages. The father and son investigating the case have to sit through their accounts afterward.
This is the closest match for Backman’s way of letting people get on your nerves before you find out what they’re carrying. Suicide and attempted suicide are part of the story, so pick it when you’re ready for the heavier side of Backman again.
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02
The Road to Tender Hearts
by Annie Hartnett
At sixty-three, lottery winner PJ Halliday sets out for Arizona to look up his high school crush. His daughter, two orphaned kids, and Pancakes the cat come along on this romantic errand. Pancakes can predict death. The doctor whose keyboard he sits on keeps mentioning that he’s fifty-seven.
Go here for a makeshift family with a lot to work through. The death jokes are darker, and the children’s losses and PJ’s grief are close to the surface. Alcoholism and violent parental deaths are part of the setup.
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03
The Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen, 83¼ Years Old
by Hendrik Groen
Hendrik laughs when his friend Evert cracks a joke about a resident sitting on a plate of pastries. He gets disapproving looks and apologizes. The diary is where he can say what he actually thinks. It’s also where he records the outings of the Old-But-Not-Dead Club, which he and Evert start to get a little more out of life in their Amsterdam care home.
Hendrik saves for the page the sorts of things Ove says out loud. The diary can be bleak about dementia and declining health, even as Hendrik is busy making plans.
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04
The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared
by Jonas Jonasson
Allan Karlsson skips his hundredth birthday party by climbing out of a nursing-home window in his slippers. A suitcase full of money gets him chased, and the chapters about his younger days explain how an explosives expert with little interest in politics kept turning up in the middle of world events. Choose Allan for the farce, and expect a few murders along the way.
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05
The Rosie Project
by Graeme Simsion
On a date, genetics professor Don Tillman tries to resolve a disagreement about ice cream by running a blind taste test. By the time he turns around with the samples, his date has gone. His questionnaire for finding a wife has its own problems, starting with Rosie Jarman, who fails his screening and winds up working with him to find her biological father. The lightest pick here if Ove’s devotion to doing things properly was your favorite part.
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06
The Satsuma Complex
by Bob Mortimer
Gary Thorn’s drinking companion has gone missing. He wants to find a woman he met at the pub, and his best clue to who she is comes from the book she was reading. Gary talks things over with a squirrel and supplies its side of the conversation himself.
Pick this for the lonely man’s dry running commentary with a mystery to follow. The squirrel gives it an air of gentleness, though domestic abuse comes into the story.
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07
Less
by Andrew Sean Greer
Arthur Less accepts literary invitations around the world to get out of attending his ex-boyfriend’s wedding. In a hotel lobby, he keeps checking the time on a clock that stopped years ago. The person sent to collect him is already there, looking for a woman. The trip is good company if you’d like a quieter book about getting older and feeling left behind.
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08
The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden
by Jonas Jonasson
Nombeko Mayeki is good with numbers, right down to the one an official keeps getting wrong, her age. She has a much bigger problem on her hands when she gets tangled up with a nuclear bomb that officially doesn’t exist. The farce starts in apartheid-era Soweto and has a much harsher edge than Ove’s neighborhood disputes.
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09
The Humans
by Matt Haig
The wildcard has a dog and a visitor from another planet. The alien has taken a Cambridge mathematician’s place and is trying to pass for human in the man’s own household. Eyebrows are already giving him plenty to think about.
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