A Man Called Ove

by Fredrik Backman

“When people don’t talk so much they don’t dish out the crap either,”

A job well done is a reward in its own right, as his father always used to say.

“You only need one ray of light to chase all the shadows away,” she said to him once, when he asked her why she had to be so upbeat the whole time. Apparently some monk called Francis had written as much in one of her books.

“We can busy ourselves with living or with dying, Ove. We have to move on.”

sometimes). It was as if he didn’t want other people to talk to him, he was afraid that their chattering voices would drown out the memory of her voice. He lets his fingers run gently across the gravestone, as if running them through the long tassels of a very thick rug.