A Man Called Ove, by Fredrik Backman

A surly old traditionalist seeks death and finds community.

Ove has nothing tying him to life after his wife, Sonja, dies, especially not once he gets fired from his job. He has always lived by a rigid set of rules, at the core of which is the belief that everything and everyone should be useful. Because he no longer sees himself as useful, he plans to follow Sonja to whatever afterlife a man long alienated from God might believe in. However, everything in his life is disrupted when Parvaneh and Patrick, also known as "the pregnant woman" and "the lanky one," move in across the street. Parvaneh, who is as strong-willed as Ove is stubborn, slowly begins to connect Ove to the community around him. At each of the four times Ove attempts suicide throughout the novel, a disruption to the status quo stops him, most often in the form of Parvaneh. Ultimately, it is the same rigid set of rules that had driven Ove to seek his own death that convinces him to live as a part of his newfound and reconnected community.

The characters are mostly one-dimensional, but the story is a vibrant read that examines life, death, morality, community, responsibility, and what it means to be happy.

Verdict: This book is a wonderful, funny, morose, thought-provoking read, but it is also a rare instance where the movie ("A Man Called Otto," I haven't seen the original film) might just be better.