A Man Called Ove / Fredrik Backman

Ove is the self-appointed neighborhood overseer, making sure that residents and visitors follow the home owners association rules to the letter. His daily routine includes checking to see that the recyclables have been sorted correctly, seeing that motor vehicles do not enter the residential area, and that bikes are properly stored in the bike shed. He takes this role seriously, and it immediately becomes obvious that Ove is an insufferable curmudgeon.

After the recent death of his wife, he contemplates joining her by plotting to take his own life. In a comedy of errors his attempts to do himself in are always foiled by a last-minute interruption that pulls him in closer to the circle of the living. Bit by bit the neighborhood community embraces him, and he is no longer a loner, though he is just as grumpy.

The reader learns of Ove’s upbringing and his marriage via flashbacks, and these vignettes provide important glimpses into why his convictions are the way they are, and what made him the man he is today-- warts and all.

This was a good character-driven novel which reminded me of Anne Tyler. It was quirky and cute, maybe almost too cute (the behavior of the cat, for example, seemed unlikely), but I liked the setting and the neighborhood personalities. It has already been made into a Swedish-language film, which seems to capture the tone of the novel accurately and the movie trailer can be seen by clicking/tapping here.

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Here we are / Graham Swift

This short novel offers a nostalgic look at England in the 1940s and 1950s. Evie, having just lost her husband after a long marriage, looks back at the fateful summer when they met up at the pleasure palace at the end of the Brighton pier. Evie was meant to marry someone else, Ronnie Doane, aka “The Great Pablo,” a magician whose talents really pull in the crowds in the days before television kept people in their front rooms (and to whom she serves as the feather-plumed magician’s assistant). The novel tells of Ronnie’s back story as a London child war evacuee, whose second family in Oxford is so nurturing and loving that he is conflicted about going back to his real home when the war is over. But Evie marries Jack instead and is ghosted (quite literally) by Ronnie even in her final years of life. A wonderful story about people and relationships.

Addie Pray / Joe David Brown (more recently published as Paper Moon ) Click here to check for availability at AFPLS This 1971 novel was the inspiration for the Peter Bogdanovich movie Paper Moon . Eleven-year-old Addie and her maybe-father “Long Boy” Moses Pray crisscross the Deep South “ramifying” (scamming) people during the Great Depression. Addie’s street smarts and perceived girlish innocence, along with Long Boy’s cleverness and shrewd business acumen build their operation until they are dealing in millions. The movie remained pretty true to the first half of the book (though it moved the location from Alabama to Kansas), but the adventures continue far beyond where the movie left off. The decades haven’t dimmed the magic of this rollicking adventure, either in the film or the book. ©Ken Vesey, 17 June 2010

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie / Alan Bradley

Pippi Longstocking meets Miss Marple in the character of precocious 11-year-old Flavia de Luce, the youngest of three daughters in a once well-to-do family in early 1950s rural England. This first mystery in an intended series finds Flavia beating the local police inspector at his own game in solving the mystery surrounding the murder of an old school mate of her father's in their back garden (in the cucumber patch no less). Clues include a bird indigenous to Norway, a rare stamp, and a bit of flaky pie crust. This nostalgic and innocent whodunnit will have you at the edge of your seat by its suspenseful climax. I can see BBC/PBS picking up on the popularity of this charming mystery. The second in the series has already been published and the third is soon to follow. And by the way, here's a great library quote from Flavia on page 50: "... it occurred to me that Heaven must be a place where the library is open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. No

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