A Man Called Ove

by Fredrik Backman

‘Engines give you what you deserve,’ he used to explain. ‘If you treat them with respect they’ll give you freedom, if you behave like an arse they’ll take it from you.’

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

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.

He sits there for what must be an hour, just staring at that photo. Of all the imaginable things he most misses about her, the thing he really wishes he could do again is hold her hand in his. She had a way of folding her index finger into his palm, hiding it inside. And he always felt that nothing in the world was impossible when she did that. Of all the things he could miss, that’s what he misses most.

This was a world where one became outdated before one’s time was up. An entire country standing up and applauding the fact that no one was capable of doing anything properly any more. The unreserved celebration of mediocrity. No one could change tyres. Install a dimmer switch. Lay some tiles. Plaster a wall. Submit their own tax accounts. These were all forms of knowledge that had lost their relevance,

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.

‘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.