Allan Karlsson is about to turn 100 years old and he is bored. He’s stuck in a nursing home which has a bunch of very annoying rules and not nearly the excitement he has become accustomed to. With very little in the way of plans, but considerable luck- and true to the book’s title- Karlsson climbs out of the window and into an adventure.
The events snowball from there to include theft, inadvertent murder, car crashes, an escaped elephant and a love story- and that’s just the 100 year old Karlsson. Alternating between these present chapters are the past chapters telling the story of Karlsson’s life up to his arrival at the old folks home. It’s a Forest Gump-ian adventure, where Karlsson’s predilection for and talent with explosives leads him into- and out of- interesting and sticky situations. From Russian gulags to the battles for the Chinese republic to the fledging North Korean state to a Bali beach resort, Karlsson finds his way through them all.
Forest Gump is a good comparison, and your enjoyment of that movie is probably a good gauge for how much you’d enjoy this book. It’s a light and breezy, suspend-your-disbelief caper. The more you’re able to suspend your disbelief, the more you’ll get out of this. A lot of this was really fun, but the longer it went on, the longer it my disbelief refused to hold off.
I’m counting this one as my cbr13bingo Pandemic square- I needed the Forest Gump heartwarming cheese.