Show notes
Ove has been forced into retirement, is a few months a widower, and is convinced the modern world is staffed entirely by idiots. Then a new family moves in next door and backs a trailer into his mailbox. Full spoilers throughout, including the ending, plus a comparison with the Tom Hanks adaptation. Content note: suicide.
Alex and Lindsey get into Ove as a man with an enormous heart and a very small point of view, and what he actually learns: not a transformation, just the capacity to give a little. They work through Sonja as the colour in his black-and-white world, and the wish that he could have found some of it in himself. Plus the difference between being incompetent and simply never having been taught, and the habit of explaining a feeling away so you never have to feel it.
This book also sent Lindsey after a slow bathroom sink at ten at night. It did not go well.
Also: Parvaneh, a cat with better judgment than most of the humans, what A Man Called Otto changes, and a pre-emptive apology to Alex’s dad.
Cry count and ratings at the end.