A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Youthful Condescension

Movie scripts. That’s all you get nowadays. Movie scripts. That’s where the money is of course. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. It used to be you could rely on a good somber Nordic tragedy, something dark and brooding, something that would stick with you all winter. None of this sentimental pap, the old saws about pensioned off widowers who only have themselves and their silly routines to worry about. Not that old people aren’t funny, and not just funny ha ha. Actually they’re hysterical. But that doesn’t mean they’re emotionally crippled or demented or need some sort of redemption. Who says nobody looks forward to retirement? Are you kidding? Sleeping in, no deadlines, horrid workmates and endless tedious meetings a thing of the past. This is as close to heaven as you’re ever going to get... if you’re lucky. So why write about an old man (well middle-aged actually at 59, a kid really) as if he were a child lost at the zoo? Why? I’ll tell you why: So he can have his soul saved by a too-sweet-to-be-wholesome Japanese family. That’s why. Pure sentimentality. It’s good box office. But It was never meant to be like this. Time was when movies were films and books were literature. Films made you laugh and cry and throw up lunch; literature made you consider and think and connect things. It’s all mixed up now. Who knows what writers write for anymore - for an ‘awwwwh’ and a lump in the throat it looks like. And don’t get me started on the way they use kids - the biggest-brown-eyes-you’ve-ever-seen ploy. That was old before they had talkies. Child exploitation I call it. And yeah sure I lost my wife not too long ago. It was tough for a while. But you think anyone my age is a novice at this loss and suffering thing? Get over yourself. How many people my age still have their parents? No one I know. Most have lost a sibling or two. Some have lost children, and not just to death. There are worse things than death that today’s snowflakes know nothing about, like drug addictions, and mental handicaps, and wasting illness, like decades of physical suffering by folks you’ve loved, and like, yeah dementia. You’re the amateur, mate. I’ve been round the block. I can take it on the chin without making myself a misery for other people, or even for myself. So all’s I can say is it wasn’t supposed to be like this. But it is like this and I’m OK with that. So knock it off with your feel good movie scripts.

Postscript 12/01/20: Reality is apparently catching up with my comments: https://thebaffler.com/salvos/they-ma...

View all my reviews