A Man Called Ove

by Fredrik Backman

Finally

‘I just wanted to know what it felt like to be someone you look at.’

He believed so strongly in things: justice and fair play and hard work and a world where right just had to be right.

Not so one could get a medal or a diploma or a slap on the back for it, but just because that was how it was supposed to be. Not many men of his kind were made any more, Sonja had understood.

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.

‘They say the best men are born out of their faults and that they often improve later on, more than if they’d never done anything wrong,’ she’d said gently.

there was a sort of silence in the room that can only arise between a man who does not want to lose his daughter and a man who has not yet completely understood that he has been chosen to take her away from there.

If there was one thing that made people forget to dislike one, it was when they were given the opportunity to talk about themselves.

And the room was once again overwhelmed by that silence which can only arise between a woman’s beloved and her father.

Ove’s shoulder slips away from Parvaneh’s hand.

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

And this is why a cat, an overweight allergy sufferer, a bent person

and a man called Ove make the inspection round that morning.

Sometimes it’s hard to explain why some men suddenly do the things they do. And Ove had probably known all along what he had to do, who he had to help before he could die. But we are always optimists when it comes to time, we think there will be time to do things with other people. And time to say things to them. Time to appeal.

It is difficult to admit that one is wrong. Particularly when one has been wrong for a very long time.

‘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 its imperfections.

Meat and potatoes and sauce are perfectly adequate. But if one has to complicate things like she does, Ove could possibly agree that her rice with saffron is reasonably edible. It is. So he had two portions of it. And the cat had one and a half.

It is difficult to admit that one is wrong. Particularly when one has been wrong for a very long time.

And something is shining in her eyes. Something that Ove recognises.

39 A MAN CALLED OVE Death is a strange thing. People live their whole lives as if it does not exist, and yet it’s often one of the great motivations for living. Some of us, in time, become so conscious of it that we live harder, more obstinately, with more fury. Some need its constant presence to even be aware of

antithesis. Others become so preoccupied with it that they go into the waiting room long before it has announced its arrival.

And it wasn’t as if Ove also died when Sonja left him. He just stopped

living.

Love is a strange thing. It takes you by surprise.

Her eyes glitter as she walks through the rooms, the way eyes glitter when a person imagines her child’s future memories unfolding there on the floor.