A Man Called Ove

by Fredrik Backman

Ove is the sort of man who checks the status of all things by giving them a good kick.

You miss the strangest things when you lose someone. Little things. Smiles. The way she turned round in her sleep. Even repainting a room for her.

‘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.

But no other boy had gone the wrong way on the train for hours every day just because he liked sitting next to her while she spoke.

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

always that it will pass us by. And leave us there alone.