I must be becoming a fucking crotchety old person. I'm increasingly immune to twee, to the point where it now enrages me to read anything meant to be sweet and funny and oh a little quirky. I'm like the ogre of book clubs everywhere: "I hated A Man Called Ove and I Hate All of YOU". This would have pushed all my buttons in the past: WWII, Jewish families, precocious little boy, blah blah blah. But aside from some very funny asides (the kid likens his grandma's tales of the camps with his having to go to camp that one summer, the old man says he's too old to travel at his age because he can't afford to get diarrhea) and some actually nicely unsentimental writing, I just felt at a distance throughout this whole book until the very end, when I admit I was unexpectedly touched. But it just feels a trifle, and I feel bad about that, because I think this was this author's big deal. I'm sorry but not really because shitty old people are never really that sorry.