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.

Ove had never been asked how he lived before he met her. But if anyone had asked him, he would have answered that he didn’t.

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.

“All people want to live dignified lives; dignity just means something different to different people,”

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.

Death is a strange thing. People live their whole lives as if it does not exist, and yet it’s often one of the great motivations for living. Some of us, in time, become so conscious of it that we live harder, more obstinately, with more fury. Some need its constant presence to even be aware of its antithesis. Others become so preoccupied with it that they go into the waiting room long before it has announced its arrival. We fear it, yet most of us fear more than anything that it may take someone other than ourselves. For the greatest fear of death is always that it will pass us by. And leave us there alone.