Every Dog Has its Stay: Fetch and Release

When I started reading Beth Morrey's The Love Story of Missy Carmichael, I felt like I'd read it before.  Elderly and alone, main character Missy is soured out on life.  She especially hates the people who frequent the local dog park and the way they pander to their pets.  Yet it's the park where she ends up making friends with a motley crew of strangers -- both human and otherwise -- who change her life.

Yep, no doubt about it, Missy is the male Ove.  As in Fredrik Backman's A Man Called Ove.  As I read on, I learned that the story even had some Backmanian twists.  Then I re-read the back cover and realized that this wasn't a brilliant observation on my part but something I'd gleaned from a review:

"Fans of Fredrik Backman and Rachel Joyce will enjoy this uplifting (but never saccharine) 'coming of old' story." -- Library Journal

Like Missy herself, this book requires a little patience.  For the first half, I wasn't even sure if I liked it.  Which in and of itself was problematic because it made me question if I was being a bad feminist.  Was A Man Called Ove really the better book?  Or was I merely more forgiving of an unlikeable man than an unlikeable woman?  Yet even if I don't have an answer to this, The Love Story of Missy Carmichael is worth reading.  If nothing else, then it reminds us that every unpleasant person has a sad secret and is deserving of our kindness.

That and a young pup can teach an old dog new tricks.

Saab Story Dory: Still Waters Pun Deep

We all know a grumpy old man.  Or at the very least have seen one on TV, whether he be an old-in-spirit-only curmudgeon like Ron Swanson, or one of the classic geriatrics from (what else?) Grumpy Old Men.  People say that oldsters get so crotchety because they've endured so much and have had enough already.  Which I thought I understood.  But then I read Fredrik Backman's A Man Called Ove and realized I didn't understand anything. 

Not too long ago, I read -- and very much enjoyed -- Backman's Anxious People.  But A Man Called Ove was Backman's first novel.  I'd always wanted to read it, and when Ellie of Ivy's Closet and Caitlin & Megan said I'd like it, I made an Amazon order.  As a librarian, Ellie knows books.

So, Ove.  When we meet him in suburban Sweden, he's the epitome of the irate, set-in-his-ways, hates-everyone senior citizen.  He loathes technology, people who aren't punctual, and cats.  He's always driven a Saab and distrusts anyone who drives anything else.  Never mind that he's only fifty-nine.  Ove is the kind that's been old all his life.  But the death of his adored wife, Sonja, as well as the loss of his job have exacerbated his already cantankerous ways.  Every morning, he patrols his neighborhood in search of burglars and other miscreants.  He oils his kitchen counters whether they need it or not.  He fixes things in his toolshed.  And he does it all not to pass the time, but because he needs to be useful.  As Ove's own Sonja said, ' "All people want to live dignified lives; dignity just means something different to different people." ' (274)

Backman does this clever thing where he alternates between Ove's past and present, making everything seem at the same time old-fashioned and timeless.  It turns out that Ove's life has been exceptionally sad, and Backman fleshes out each flashback with details so heartbreaking -- and, yes, sometimes funny -- that I couldn't help but be endeared to this angry old man who has very good reasons for being angry after all.  In this way, A Man Called Ove reminds me of another beloved book, Gabrielle Zevin's The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry.  Both are about seemingly misanthropic men who've been burned but turn things around just in time to trust again and appreciate life.  And that's my favorite kind of story.  

If Ove knew that he was the subject of this post -- well, if Ove were a real person and knew that he was the subject of this post -- then he would hate it, right down from the publicity (if you could call it that) to the hot pink background.  And that amuses me. 

Because documenting stuff with humor and heart is where I find my dignity.

And I like to think that Ove would respect that -- if only because I made a pun about Saab.

Stockholm Syndrome Symbiosis: My Bank Robber, My BFF

Anxious People, by Fredrik Backman, is one of the strangest books I've ever read.  The best way I can describe it is as a cross between a Wes Anderson movie and a riddle.  (I should mention that Backman is Swedish, which means that I read the translated version.)  Set in a small town outside of Stockholm, Anxious People is the story of a botched bank robbery and its hostages.  But it's also about, to paraphrase Backman, a bridge and the people who did and didn't jump off it.  So it's a story about people.  Anxious people.  And as Backman says on the very first page, that includes a lot of us:

"Because there's such an unbelievable amount that we're all supposed to be able to cope with these days.  You're supposed to have a job, and somewhere to live, and a family, and you're supposed to pay taxes and have clean underwear and remember the password to your damn Wi-Fi.  Some of us never manage to get the chaos under control, so our lives simply carry on, the world spinning through space at two million miles an hour while we bounce about on its surface like so many lost socks.  Our hearts are bars of soap that we keep losing hold of; the moment we relax, they drift off and fall in love and get broken, all in the wink of an eye." (1)

I could relate.  Or at least, the old me could.  Life can be overwhelming, with expectations coming from every corner.  It's a mindset that's catalyzed by a lack of control, an idea that Backman weaves like a wayward ribbon, ending chapters, paragraphs, and sometimes even sentences with surprises that make you realize that we go through life with limited information.  It's all very clever.  And the tone is sometimes sweet, sometimes snarky, but consistently wistful, as if Backman holds all the cards but doesn't always like what he sees.  It made me feel like I was reading the story through a funhouse mirror.  That's where the Wes Anderson bit comes in. Well, from that and the character who wears a rabbit mask.    

Anxious People shows us that we're all connected, even the most troubled among us, and that it's these connections that make us human.  And not, mind you, in a let's-all-sit-in-a-circle-and-talk-about-our-feelings-kind-of-way (although I'm not opposed to that), but in the invisible, unbeknownst-to-most-of-us-chain-of-events that give our lives meaning.  Kind of like a Scandinavian, hipsterish It's a Wonderful Life.  Because not all bank robbers are evil.  Some of them are people who just lost their way and need the friendship of a good hostage or eight to get back.  

In Stockholm and everywhere.