A Man Called Ove

by Fredrik Backman

People said Ove saw the world in black and white. But she was color. All the color he had.

“Men are what they are because of what they do. Not what they say,” said Ove.

Even men at train station ticket desks have been in love.

But if anyone had asked, he would have told them that he never lived before he met her. And not after either.

Every human being needs to know what she’s fighting for. That was what they said. And she fought for what was good. For the children she never had. And Ove fought for her. Because that was the only thing in this world he really knew.

Everything else on the paper is drawn in black, but the figure in the middle is a veritable explosion of color. A riot of yellow and red and blue and green and orange and purple.

Maybe their sorrow over children that never came should have brought the two men closer. But sorrow is unreliable in that way. When people don’t share it there’s a good chance that it will drive them apart instead.

Ove realized that a part of Rune had given up forever. And for that maybe neither Ove nor Rune forgave him.

But we are always optimists when it comes to time; we think there will be time to do things with other people. And time to say things to them.

“Loving someone is like moving into a house,” Sonja used to say. “At first you fall in love with all the new things, amazed every morning that all this belongs to you, as if fearing that someone would suddenly come rushing in through the door to explain that a terrible mistake had been made, you weren’t actually supposed to live in a wonderful place like this. Then over the years the walls become weathered, the wood splinters here and there, and you start to love that house not so much because of all its perfection, but rather for its imperfections.

You get to know all the nooks and crannies. How to avoid getting the key caught in the lock when it’s cold outside. Which of the floorboards flex slightly when one steps on them or exactly how to open the wardrobe doors without them creaking. These are the little secrets that make it your home.”

It is difficult to admit that one is wrong. Particularly when one has been wrong for a very long time.

the greatest fear of death is always that it will pass us by. And leave us there alone.