A Man Called Ove

by Fredrik Backman

Ove feels an instinctive skepticism towards all people taller than six feet; the blood can’t quite make it all the way up to the brain.

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

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

People always said Ove and Ove’s wife were like night and day. Ove realized full well, of course, that he was the night.

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 sorrow is unreliable in that way. When people don’t share it there’s a good chance that it will drive them apart instead.

She found it easier to forgive than Ove did. Forgive God and the universe and everything. Ove got angry instead. Maybe because he felt someone had to be angry on her behalf, when everything that was evil seemed to assail the only person he’d ever met who didn’t deserve it.

“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.”