A Man Called Ove

by Frederik Backman (Washington Square Press, originally published in Swedish in 2014 and translated by Henning Koch in 2014)

Ove is 59, apparently “on the spectrum” with all the difficulties with human relationships that that implies. As a young man, he fell head over heels in love with Sonja, who did not judge him (perhaps because her father had very similar traits), who loved him in return. Ove and Sonja married, but their happiness was marred by a tragic accident. Sonja was able to move past the tragedy and get on with the business of living, so Ove did, too. Until Sonja died, robbing Ove’s life of all its color and robbing Ove of his reason to go on living.

Spoiler alert: Below, there are some details about the story that you might not want to know if you are going to read it. Stop reading here!

So Ove decides to end his life, and the novel focuses on a period of weeks (I think–it’s not entirely clear, and there are numerous flashbacks to Ove’s childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood (meeting, falling in love with, and marrying Sonja) one winter during which Ove attempts to commit suicide several times, in different ways (neatly and with minimum trouble to those who would need to deal with the aftermath, as per Ove’s idea of the right way to conduct oneself). But each attempt is interrupted by others who need Ove’s help: his old friend (more recently, enemy) Rune and Rune’s wife Anita; his new neighbors, Patrick, Parvaneh, and their children; his obese young next-door neighbor Jimmy; the awkward teenager Adrian; gay Mirsad, whose father hates homosexuals; and a nameless stray cat, among others. Slowly and inexorably, they pull Ove back from the brink and show him how to love and live again.

Although she is dead as the novel begins, Sonja is a luminous major character in Ove’s story. Part of the reason that Ove does what he does is because he knows Sonja would approve, and he believes that when he dies, they will be reunited; he doesn’t want her to be angry with him because of what he does or doesn’t do. Sonja’s good qualities shine throughout the story: gentleness, generosity, intelligence, perseverance, a sense of justice and an ability to meet each human being on his/her own terms, without judgment.

Parvaneh, an Iranian immigrant, is also a very important character in the book. Outgoing, generous and practical, Parvaneh also refuses to be frightened by Ove’s grumpy exterior. She does not hesitate to ask for, even to demand, his help when she needs it, thus saving his life on several occasions.

I just loved this book. Especially if you know someone on the spectrum, you may gain some insight into how that person thinks and sees the world. The novel has been made into a movie, which looks good, and I hope to see it soon, but I don’t expect it to surpass the novel. Movies seldom do.

Black Narcissus

by Rumer Godden (Little, Brown 1939)

This one is part of my on-going project of reading all of my mother’s books which I still have and haven’t read (Cf. The Birds Fall Down). She had two by Rumer Godden: this one, and An Episode of Sparrows, which I believe is better known.

Black Narcissus is the story of a small group of Anglican sisters who are sent to a remote village in the Himalayas to open a convent with a school, clinic, and dispensary in a building which has been offered to their order by “the General”, the local potentate. Ominously, a group of brothers failed at a similar project in the same location. The offer of the building seems too good to pass up, but at the same time there are numerous signs pointing to failure (so the reader isn’t very surprised when in the end, the nuns depart, leaving little to remember them by).

There are some colorful characters, including Sister Clodagh, the sister-in-charge (I spent the whole book wondering how to pronounce her name); Sister Blanche, aka Sister Honey, the over-emotional sister whose rash kindness will eventually set the group on the road to disaster; Sister Ruth, “the snake-faced sister”, who sinks into madness; Mr. Dean, the Englishman “gone native” (apparently a terrible thing) who kindly helps the nuns in every way he can, including trying to get them to understand the people they are trying to serve; and Dilip Rai, “the young General”, the eponymous Black Narcissus, who wants to study in England, so he convinces Sister Clodagh to teach him. Reluctantly, she acquiesces, but his presence in the Convent eventually leads to trouble.

I am always astonished at the arrogance of the English (and of Christian missionaries) who believe that they have everything to teach the inhabitants of other lands, and nothing to learn from them. (Mr. Dean is the exception to this unfortunate tendency.) In this novel, Rumer Godden seems to be saying that some other cultures are impervious to Western teachings, although some of her characters refuse to believe this.

Washington Schlepped Here: Walking in the Nation’s Capital

by Christopher Buckley (Crown Journeys 2003)

Even 15 years later, this little gem will appeal to both visitors to and residents of Washington, D.C.  In a series of four walks, Buckley (who worked for Vice President Bush in the 1980s) regales the reader with fascinating (and often funny) details of the history and background of the various sites, memorials, monuments, government buildings, and more.

Walk One covers Union Station, the Capitol, the Grant Memorial, the National Gallery, and the major Smithsonian museums on the National Mall. Of course, it would take you weeks to really see what’s in all those museums (plus the ones that have been added since the publication of the book, like the National Museum of the American Indian, the National Museum of African Art, the Sackler Gallery (Asian art) and the National Museum of African American History and Culture. So if you were really making the walks, you might want to break this one down into about ten walks. But as someone who has lived in and near DC for many years, I was happy just reading about places I have already visited. Something new I learned: Alexander “Boss” Shepherd was appointed by President Grant to govern D.C. in the 1870s, and it is Shepherd who filled in the stinking open sewer that was Tiber Creek and installed new (covered) water and sewer systems, who paved and lit the streets, and who built parks and planted 60,000 trees, among other achievements. I wonder if Shepherd St. N.W. was named for him. He deserved something grander, if so.

Walk Two: the major memorials and monuments on the west end of the Mall, the Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Interesting factoid no. 1: The Washington Monument was supposed to have been built on a north-south line running from the White House to the Jefferson Memorial, but the ground there would not have supported it, so the site had to be moved slightly south and east. (I wonder how they figured this out, exactly.) Interesting factoid no. 2: Prominent Washington women had chained themselves to some of the cherry trees around the Tidal Basin to prevent their being cut down to accommodate the Jefferson Memorial, so Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes had tea and coffee delivered to the women  so that they would have to pee, and when they left to pee, the trees were cut down. (Sounds suspect to me: not because tea and coffee don’t make people need to pee, but all at the same time? And they didn’t think to take turns, leaving somebody there guarding the trees?)

Walk Three: the area around the White House, including Ford’s Theater, where Abraham Lincoln was shot. Interesting factoid: Daniel Sickles, a congressman from New York, who lived next to Decatur House on Lafayette Square, killed his wife’s lover, pled (or pleaded, which I understand is more correct) temporary insanity (the first time the insanity defense was used) and was acquitted, and later lost his leg at Gettysburg; it was put on display at the Army Medical Museum, where he used to go and visit it.

Walk Four: Arlington National Cemetery. I learned a lot that I didn’t know, like the re-interment of Pierre Charles L’Enfant, designer of the capital city, who died in poverty and disgrace (after being fired for his “bad attitude”, apparently) and was initially buried in Bladensburg, Maryland. Interesting factoid: Clinton’s Ambassador to Switzerland had to be dug up and re-interred elsewhere when it was discovered that he had not, in fact, been a veteran, as he had claimed. And Joe Louis, the boxer, wasn’t eligible for burial at Arlington either, but Reagan made an exception for him, and so he is there.