A Man Called Ove

by Fredrik Backman

Self-employed people and other idiots all drive Audis.

“I miss you,” he whispers. It’s been six months since she died. But Ove still inspects the whole house twice a day to feel the radiators and check that she hasn’t sneakily turned up the heating.

He was a man of black and white. And she was color. All the color he had.

“Thirty?! And no driver’s license? Is there something wrong with you?”

Rude

Ove went to sit by Sonja. It was the single best decision he would ever make.

Ove realized that he wanted to hear her talking about the things she loved for the rest of his life.

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.

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

If there was one thing that made people forget to dislike one, it was when they were given the opportunity to talk about themselves.

Can’t a man calmly and quietly stand over a cat-shaped hole in a snowdrift in his own garden anymore?

He knew better than to speak ill of what she loved; after all he understood very keenly how it was to receive her love when no one else could understand why he was worthy of it.

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. “You’re the funniest thing she knows. That’s why she always draws you in color,” says Parvaneh.

“You! You want to buy a French car. Don’t worry so much about others, you have enough problems of your own.”

“Thanks, Granddad,” she whispers and runs into her room.

The last thing Ove has time to think before everything goes dark is that he has to make her promise that she won’t let the ambulance drive down between the houses. Because vehicular traffic is prohibited in the residential area.

“Parr… nava…?” He broods, and gives Parvaneh a distracted look. “Parvaneh,” she corrects. The doctor doesn’t look particularly concerned. “You’re listed here as the ‘next of kin,’ ”

“His heart is too big,”

Ove is quite clearly UTTERLY LOUSY at dying!”

before anyone can explain how it happened, the three-year-old has become a six-year-old, in that disrespectful way often noted in three-year-olds.

“Give my love to Sonja and thank her for the loan,”