A Man Called Ove

by Fredrik Backman

People said Ove saw the world in black and white. But she was colour. All the colour he had.

‘Men are what they are because of what they do. Not what they say,’ said Ove.

She only loved abstract things like music and books and strange words.

‘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.

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.

And now he doesn’t quite know how to carry on without the tip of her nose in the pit between his throat and his shoulder.

Now he stands there running his hand over her gravestone. Again and again. As if he’s trying to rub her back to life.

Something inside a man goes to pieces when he has to bury the only person who ever understood him. There is no time to heal that sort of wound.