A Man Called Ove

 

A Man Called Ove – by Fredrik Backman

We’ve all known people like Ove throughout our lives.  People who are always complaining and are never happy about anything. In fact, these are people who only seem content when there is something to complain about; and if there isn’t anything to complain about, they can easily find something, tangible or not, to fill that gap.  Ove is such a man.  It doesn’t help matters that he’s an old man when our story starts.  We all know that grouchy crabby people tend to only get more grouchy and crabby as they get older.

So we initially read about Ove and his issues with the entire world.  He gets up every day and walks the neighborhood making mental notations of rules being broken by his neighbors.  He’s upset when his wife turns up the radiator ½ of a degree. He literally distrusts anyone around him.  In fact, he even punches out a clown in a hospital employed to entertain children.  Why? Because the clown convinces Ove to give him a coin, and the clown makes the coin “disappear” via a magic trick.  I should point out, though, that these incidents are told to us through the lens of a lot of humor.  Yes, we’re disgusted by Ove’s behavior, but the story is told in such a way that we laugh a lot more than we grind our teeth. 

Well, whenever we encounter such individuals in real life, there’s a part of us that wonders how and why such an individual can be so morose.  If we’re fair to our feelings, we often conclude that these individuals were probably raised in a bad environment that caused them to morph into an incredibly caustic specimen.  Maybe they’ve had a miserable life?  Or maybe their life was somewhat o.k. until some sort of misery or catastrophe interrupted their normal, stable world?

Author Fredrik Backman realizes this to be true.  So when telling us about Ove,  he also tells a parallel story in these pages.  In addition to reading about Ove in the present day, we also get a tour of Ove’s life and see him grow up, get his first car, his first job, and his first girlfriend who would later be his wife.  Sadly, these instances are often filled with turmoil and inequity.  When we read of these instances, we don’t dislike Ove anymore.  We pity him.  Instead of yelling at him, we want to hug him and apologize that the cards of life seemed to have always been somehow stacked against him.

I do confess that I found the “current” story a bit unbelievable at times.  It seems like, out of the blue, Ove gets to know all of his neighbors rather intimately after being thrown into events that cause him to meet these individuals.  Such interactions don’t bode well for Ove, so when he meets all of his neighbors, he isn’t exactly friendly.  In fact, he’s incredibly rude and hostile. Now, people that **I** know, when confronted with such an individual, would probably make a rude hand gesture to such individual, and then walk back into their locked house – praying that this unpleasant individual will somehow disappear.  Yet these neighbors do the opposite. Even though they don’t know this rude, callous man much at all, they somehow rally around him with affection when he clearly doesn’t want any of them around. They’re much more gracious around “Ove” type people than anyone that I’ve ever encountered.

Well, I guess this is somewhat necessary to move the plot forward, and it does allow the hard surface of Ove to brittle ever so slightly.  It’s still a great story overall, and I’ll admit that it brought me to tears on more than one occasion.  The subtle lesson here is to be forgiving.  When people hurt us directly or indirectly, there’s likely something in their life that has caused them to be the way they are.  This is something all of us should remember.   Being a person of forgiveness and turning one’s cheek often has tremendous value.

There was one subtle thing about this book that bothered me, however.  Ove is supposed to be an “old man”, yet we’re told he’s only 59.  This seems too farfetched.  In my mind, I envisioned this person being about a quarter of a century older.   Maybe 59 doesn’t sound old because I’m 54?  Maybe the author was a whole lot younger than 59 when he wrote the book and such an age seemed old to him at the time?  I don’t know for sure, but I would advise you to ignore the fact that Ove is only 59 and tell yourself he’s about 75.  This seems a much more believable age for this character and his fetid opinions of the world and life in general.

Fear: Trump in the White House

 

Fear: Trump in the White House by Bob Woodward

This was Bob Woodward’s first of two books that he wrote about the Trump presidency.  I read the second one (“Rage”) first, and there’s one key difference between the two.  In the second book, Trump allowed himself to be extensively interviewed by Woodward.  This is highly apparent since Woodward essentially recounts many of those interviews verbatim in that book.   The disadvantage is that such accounts don’t make the book as interesting.  The big advantage, however, is it truly shows just how deranged the 45^th president was (and still is).  In other words, Bob Woodward didn’t really have to add any of his reflections and thoughts for the second book; he just let the madman ramble.

For this book, for whatever reason, Trump was never interviewed.  However, the overall flow of this narrative is essentially the same. Donald Trump was completely clueless when it came to knowing how to run the country, and his advisors and cabinet essentially had to run around behind his back, covering up his mistakes, and doing all they could to ensure that this president didn’t (literally) blow up the country. 

I guess it’s easy to see how someone like Trump could have such a massive ego and never admit that he’s ever been wrong about anything.  Being a highly successful businessman will do that to you.  What’s so sad, and frustrating, is that Trump is completely clueless in that he thinks he can dictate over the free world as if he were trying to conduct a mammoth real estate deal.  Yes, it’s much easier to be a ruthless bully at the negotiating table when it comes to building casinos, but this sad character could never get it through his thick skull that you can’t apply this same methodology when dealing with foreign countries and even cabinet members and the representatives on Capitol Hill.  No one on his cabinet is spared his scorn.  I mean, how can you respect a president who calls his attorney general a “mentally retarded ignorant southerner” behind his back?

Like many of Bob Woodward’s books, there really isn’t an overall theme to this book.  We begin the book on the campaign trail during the 2016 race, and it abruptly ends about half-way through his presidency.  Why does Woodward stop there?  Does he think he already has enough material for a complete book? Is he eager to publish this halfway through the presidency so people can see just how malodorous the man is?  I would guess “yes” to both of those questions.  So there is nothing here about his inept handling of the COVID crisis, nor do we read about his idiocy when he pouts that the 2020 election was “stolen” and tries to instigate an insurrection with many of his devout supporters who, somehow, are actually dumber than he is.  The former incident is in Woodward’s second book, the latter will be in many other books to come I’m sure.  So we do feel a bit jarred when this book ends where it does, but Woodward gets his overall point across just fine.

This book serves in many ways as a Cliff’s Notes of many of the initiatives and goals of Trump’s first two years.  We read about many of the ridiculous things that he wants to accomplish that make absolutely no sense, and how his cabinet members try to rationalize with their clueless leader how his ideas simply won’t work, and if they actually try to put his initiatives into place, he’ll essentially destroy the country; either financially or via nuclear bomb from one of our potentially aggravated enemies.  In fact, much of this book focuses on his cabinet and advisors going behind his back and either ignoring or rescinding his orders.  Fortunately, they deduce, Trump won’t even figure out what they’re doing.  Trump’s brain is so scattered and unfocused that he can’t even remember what he ordered his team to do by the time the sun sets.  This allows his advisors to (literally) sneak initiatives off his desk that he wants to push. If he stops thinking about it after a little while, he’ll forget about it completely.  They’re right.  It’s quite scary, but one feels magnificently comforted that at least his cabinet members had the sense to quietly remedy much of the damage Trump would do, or try to do.

Most of this book, like all of Woodward’s accounts, is very left-brained.  This book is not a hodge podge of celebrity gossip that focuses on the sleazier aspects of the man, his history, or his private life.  It’s mostly about the inner workings and policy initiatives. This is not a boring book, though.   Woodward does an excellent job bringing his reader along to understand many of the lesser-known aspects of a president’s administration.  I imagine that most common constituents don’t really know much about Trump’s proposed steel tariff initiatives or the KORUS trade agreement that he was always trying to dismantle.

There’s quite a lot here on the Mueller investigation of the Russian election meddling as well, and this was the one area that I thought was a bit too much in the weeds. We read of lengthy meetings between attorneys on both sides of the fence haggling back and forth, and it tends to take away from the overall enjoyment of the book.  In fact, this is really where the book “ends”.  This was kind of a downer since the book ended on a somewhat negative note in terms of interest.  One wishes that the author would have perhaps given an overall summary of his findings of Trump and his presidency at the conclusion of the narrative.  Perhaps the author thought that would have been inappropriate since it had only been two years in the presidency.

That leads me to another conclusion I came to, and that is I don’t really think Woodward intended this to be a hatchet job.  I don’t think he set out to tear the man down with this narrative.  Like many, I’m sure he was incredibly surprised that Trump won the election, but one gets the feeling that, like many others, he was hoping he would be pleasantly surprised shocked with the man.  Sadly, though, we read that this never happened.  I didn’t feel Woodward was attacking the man with his journalistic pen.  I felt he was just calling it as it was.  And it “was” incredibly sad.

I would also conclude that the word in the book’s title “Fear” is really indictive of how those in the cabinet felt trying to appease their lunatic of a boss. Those closest to the inner workings of the government at the time were truly petrified about what could happen had Trump gotten his way in many cases.  We can truly thank God that this didn’t happen, and that said cabinet members actually did keep the country functioning during this four years of insanity; regardless of the fact that their boss never gave a rip about their feelings nor accomplishments. This was demonstrated during his frequent reckless Twitter outbursts. These idiotic rantings would almost require a book of its own.

Thank God he’s gone.  Let’s pray he never comes back.

A Gentleman in Moscow

 

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

A Gentleman in Moscow is one of those books that if, instead of actually reading it, you had someone who HAD read it tell you the entire story, you wouldn’t really be that impressed.  The thing that makes this novel so outstanding is not necessarily the story, but how the author TELLS the story.  You can make the accusation that this book only focuses on one character, in one place, over 40+ years, and that not a lot of substantial exciting events happen.  Yes, this is true, but to hear author Amor Towles tell this tale, it’s incredibly enrapturing.  Essentially, the author knows how to tell an extraordinarily captivating story when not a lot of captivating events happen within the circle of our narrative.

The story begins in Moscow, Russia after the Russian civil war in 1922 that elevated the Bolshevik regime into power after the lackluster tsar was dethroned, exiled, and eventually executed.  Our main character is Count Alexander Rostov – a distant family member of the murdered tsar. Because he is a “threat” to the new Russia, yet somewhat well known, he is spared the firing squad by the Bolsheviks and relegated to living the rest of his life under house arrest at Moscow’s well renowned Metropol Hotel.  The Metropol is the finest of the finest in Moscow. In fact, Rostov has actually been a resident for the last four years.  Unfortunately, now that his status has radically changed, he immediately finds himself transferred from his luxurious suite to a much smaller, squalid space not much larger than a walk-in closet.

How exactly does a “gentleman” handle such a radical shift in his lifestyle and surroundings?  Does he pout? Scream? Write angry letters? Allow his blood pressure to skyrocket due to such injustice?   Well, that would be “no” to all of the above.  Count Alexander Rostov is above all of that.  What’s fascinating about this character is how he handles this disposition that will literally affect him for the rest of his life.  He still has money, so he can imbibe in many of what the hotel has to offer – the bars, the ballrooms, the barber (once per week for a trim), and the food.  Ah, the food.  Alexander is an extreme connoisseur of foodstuffs and the spirits that accompany a fine meal, so we read an awful lot about the meals that are consumed throughout the decades by himself and his companions.

There are friends and acquaintances that pop in our story.  Some don’t stay long, some do. The main majesty of our tale is how our gentleman responds to everything and everybody around him.  We’re never really allowed too deep into Alexander’s soul.  It seems that the “gentlemanly” thing to do is to keep such sentiments buried, so we see what is only on the surface.  For those who know the history of the U.S.S.R. from the 1920s onward know that the history isn’t pleasant, and although we hear splatters of turmoil and travails that exist outside the walls of the Metropol Hotel, most of the suffering is kept distant.  Still, we can see the living conditions of Alexander and those around him slightly deteriorate as time moves forward.

In fact, this is one of the minor criticisms of this story.  There are some who think it’s a bit unfair to read about the “suffering” of an individual who, even though confined to house arrest, is still probably living better than 99% of his countrymen. If someone is unfamiliar with the history of Russia, it might be especially hard to connect the dots between what is going on outside and how it affects those on the insulated inside; especially when those on the inside are implausibly privileged.  Although very rare, we do hear terms such as “gulag”, “collectivization”, and “the Cheka”.  Most of these horrendous events are left outside the story at a distance, and the astute reader must make connections on their own.  A great example is sometime in 1930s when Alexander and some of his “friends” who are all lovers of the finest foods, must scrimp, save, and search over a period of years just to obtain the right ingredients to concoct an exquisite dish of bouillabaisse for them to savor and enjoy.  This event takes up several pages of the story, yet like everything else in this book, is still interesting to the reader.

Although most of the events in this story aren’t that exciting, the entire story still manages to enchant the reader’s attention.  This is one of those rare gems of a novel that figurately sucks you right into the story and you feel as though you’re roaming the cavernous behemoth of a hotel at the main character’s side.   In spite of the rich language and wonderfully literate descriptions of the people and events, I never once got lost. I was never confused, and never had to retrace my steps back a few pages to figure out what was going on.  I felt I was part of the story. And I loved every minute of it.

So a story that was definitely somewhat different than what most passes for mainstream fiction these days.  If you’re a reader who craves adventure, mystery, romance, and action, this book might not be your cup of tea.  If, however, you enjoy deep literate musings of introspective characters and their somewhat dire circumstances and how they brilliantly cope, then this might be something that will pleasantly surprise you.  A refreshing story and I hope to uncover other works of a similar vein sometime in the foreseeable future.