Brought to you by the Patchogue-Medford Reference Department:
Books about grumpy older women (or men) whose compassion and tenderness are displayed after their grumpiness is challenged by perfect strangers who make them think twice about their beliefs in people. Here are a few books to help you get started!
A Man called Ove (Audiobook Download) (Book on CD) (Book) (Large Print)
There is something about Ove. At first sight, he is almost certainly the grumpiest man you will ever meet. He thinks himself surrounded by idiots – neighbors who can’t reverse a trailer properly, joggers, shop assistants who talk in code, and the perpetrators of the vicious coup d’etat that ousted him as Chairman of the Residents’ Association. He will persist in making his daily inspection rounds of the local streets. But isn’t it rare, these days, to find such old-fashioned clarity of belief and deed? Such unswerving conviction about what the world should be, and a lifelong dedication to making it just so?
Our Souls at Night (Audiobook Download) (eBook) (Book) (Large Print)
Addie Moore has lost her husband, and one day she boldly invites a neighbor, widower Louis, whom she does not know well, to come to spend the night sleeping with her (chastely, just so that she may have someone to talk to and confide in during those particularly lonely early-morning hours). Meanwhile, Addie’s grown son is in a troubled marriage, and because of that, he dumps his son on her. Her grandson’s boyish energy attracts Louis even more than it does Addie, and once Louis gets the boy a dog, the three—no, the four, including the delightfully affectionate new pooch—form a new family unit from the spare parts surrounding them.
The Other Side of Everything: a novel (Audiobook Download) (eBook) (Book)
A curmudgeonly widower emerges from a hermit-like existence in the wake of a neighborhood murder that implicates an artistic cancer survivor who creates suspiciously realistic paintings of the crime scene in her efforts to cope, a situation that is further complicated by an abandoned teen who finds herself drawn to the chief suspect.
