Oh my god that’s a long ass title.
But a really good book.
The hundred year old man who climbed out the window and disappeared is exactly what it sounds like. The book was published in 2009 within Sweden by Piratförlaget to great acclaim both there and within the European Union, and has since become translated into many many different languages. It became published where I live, in Canada, in 2012 and has been on my to read shelf since 2013.
Allan Karlson is a centenarian who decides that he does not want to celebrate his hundredth birthday at his old folks home. To escape this absolutely terrible fate, he decides to climb out the window of his room, ruining a perfectly good bed of flowers(!) at it, and proceeding to take a bus off to… Somewhere.
This of course sets in motion a whole host of rather ridiculous but amazingly funny and at times, charming events. This would be quite something for just about anyone to do at such an advanced age, but for Allan, it’s nothing. Throughout the book we get to read Allan’s life story from when he was, well, not one hundred years old. Each of these past stories allow us to learn how Allan has traveled the world and very much shaped how the history of the past hundred or so years had played out.
I’ve read a few reviews of this book on the internet, people seem to be either giving it five-stars or one-star. I personally believe this book is definitely worthy of five stars, but I’ll be giving it four for reasons I’ll describe.
Most of the reviews on the internet that offer up bad reviews simply either aren’t charmed by the book, or, in my honest opinion, take it all too literally and fail to really appreciate the book as comedy. The writing style indeed has a very playful, amicable, almost childish tone to it, or at least the English translation does. I personally feel as if this really helps the comedic atmosphere, but I do understand how one can be annoyed by it.
Beyond that, the situations, no matter how sticky, always resolved themselves, sometimes in the most outlandish ways, other times by the most unbelievable of coincidences. Again, this may bring ire out of some people, because obviously in real life, the chances of these things happening are just so, so small. Even though some people obviously disliked this, I found myself often smiling and even commenting out loud with a grin “wait, what?” It is because the situations were so zanny or fit together like a carefully planned and memorized puzzle that they were unexpected for me, and thus humorous. Again, though, this may not be funny for everyone.
The hundred year old man who climbed out the window and disappeared is extremely critical of politics however. At least, this is what I can take from it. Allan Karlson is a man who absolutely despises politics. His mind often just stops taking in information at even the slightest mention of it. Despite this, every situation he found himself in in his past life ties someway into politics. The irony of the fact definitely played somewhat into the humour of the book, but also brings up an interesting thought: with an unlucky or marvelous chain of events, anyone can just about get anywhere.
This book may not be for everyone, but it’s definitely one for me.