A Man Called Ove

by Fredrik Backman

The two men looked at each other for a moment. Then Sonja’s father nodded. And Ove nodded curtly back. And then they rose to their feet, objective and determined, in the way two men might behave if they had just agreed to go and kill a third man.

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

On the third day she went to bed in the middle of the day. Because that was what people did in Spain, she said, and one should adopt the “local customs of a place.” Ove suspected it was not so much about customs as her own preferences, and this suited her very well as an excuse.

Ove has probably known all along what he has to do, but all people at root are time optimists. We always think there’s enough time to do things with other people. Time to say things to them. And then something happens and then we stand there holding on to words like “if.”