Books like A Man Called Ove
What should you read after Fredrik Backman’s novel? It depends on what you loved most about it.
- Fredrik Backman
- 2012
- Contemporary fiction
What did you love about it?
Choosing one reorders everything below.
Best books to read after A Man Called Ove
Ranked overall. Pick what you loved above to re-rank them.
Best overall matchEleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
Gail Honeyman
Another spiky, rule-bound loner whose armour turns out to be covering something specific and terrible. The book people hand you next, and they are right to.
- A grump who softens
- Comedy that turns sad
- Neighbours who won't go away
- The backstory is genuinely bleak
Great matchThe Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper
Phaedra Patrick
A widower discovers his wife had a life he knew nothing about and goes looking for it. Ove's grief, pointed outward into a gentler adventure.
- Grief for a wife
- A grump who softens
- Flashbacks that explain a man
- Lighter and more whimsical
Great matchThe Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
Rachel Joyce
A retired man walks the length of England to postpone saying something he should have said years ago. The same quiet accounting of an ordinary life.
- Flashbacks that explain a man
- Grief for a wife
- Comedy that turns sad
- Sadder and slower going
Best for the grumpMajor Pettigrew's Last Stand
Helen Simonson
A retired major with firm views on how things ought to be done, ambushed by love and by his own village. Ove in tweed, essentially.
- Rules and the right way to do things
- A grump who softens
- A small Swedish street
- More social satire
Worth a look — with a warningThe Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared
Jonas Jonasson
The other Swedish bestseller about an old man refusing to behave, though Jonasson is after farce where Backman is quietly after your throat.
- Flashbacks that explain a man
- A grump who softens
- Comedy that turns sad
- Absurdist rather than sentimental
Great matchBritt-Marie Was Here
Fredrik Backman
Backman doing it again with the woman who alphabetises her cutlery. If Ove's rigidity was the part you loved, Britt-Marie is the purest distillation of it.
- Rules and the right way to do things
- A grump who softens
- A small Swedish street
- The football subplot won't suit everyone
Great matchThe Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
Gabrielle Zevin
A widowed bookseller with contempt for most people and most books, undone by a child left in his shop. The formula again, executed with charm.
- A grump who softens
- Grief for a wife
- Comedy that turns sad
- Bookshop cosiness throughout
Worth a look — with a warningThe Little Paris Bookshop
Nina George
A man who has organised his entire life around not opening one letter. The buried-grief architecture is identical; the whimsy is considerably thicker.
- Grief for a wife
- Flashbacks that explain a man
- Rules and the right way to do things
- Very whimsical, floating bookshop and all
Worth a look — with a warningBeartown
Fredrik Backman
Backman's best book and nothing like Ove: the same forensic sympathy for ordinary people, aimed at a town closing ranks after an assault.
- A small Swedish street
- Flashbacks that explain a man
- Comedy that turns sad
- Sexual assault at its centre
Great matchThe Rosie Project
Graeme Simsion
A man running his life on a strict protocol meets someone who ignores every rule in it. Funnier than Ove, and considerably easier on the tear ducts.
- Rules and the right way to do things
- A grump who softens
- Comedy that turns sad
- Romantic comedy shape
Great matchThe Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
Mary Ann Shaffer
Told in letters, and built on the same belief that a set of unrelated neighbours can become the thing that holds a person upright.
- Neighbours who won't go away
- A small Swedish street
- Comedy that turns sad
- Wartime history, epistolary format
Best for the communityAnxious People
Fredrik Backman
Backman locks strangers in a flat during a failed bank robbery and makes you care about every one of them. The Ove trick, performed with eight people at once.
- Neighbours who won't go away
- Comedy that turns sad
- A grump who softens
- The structure jumps around a lot
What should you read after A Man Called Ove?
A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman works on several levels at once, and which book you should read next depends on which of those levels got you. For most readers the closest match is Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman — another spiky, rule-bound loner whose armour turns out to be covering something specific and terrible. The book people hand you next, and they are right to.
If what stayed with you was grief for a wife, read The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper by Phaedra Patrick instead: a widower discovers his wife had a life he knew nothing about and goes looking for it. Ove's grief, pointed outward into a gentler adventure. The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce is the other strong option — a retired man walks the length of England to postpone saying something he should have said years ago. The same quiet accounting of an ordinary life.
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