A Man Called Ove

by Fredrik Backman

Nowadays people stood outside their newly refurbished houses and boasted as if they’d built them with their own bare hands, even though they hadn’t so much as lifted a screwdriver.

He was a man of black and white. And she was colour. All the colour he had.

‘Men are what they are because of what they do. Not what they say,’ said Ove. The director looked at him

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

He’d discovered that he liked houses. Maybe mostly because they were understandable. They could be calculated and drawn on paper. They did not leak if they were made watertight, they did not collapse if they were properly supported. Houses were fair, they gave you what you deserved. Which, unfortunately, was more than one could say about people.

A time comes in all men’s lives when they decide what sort of men they are going to be. Whether they are the kind that let other people tread on them, or not.

A time like that comes for all men, when they choose what sort of men they want to be. And if you don’t know the story you don’t know the men.

And you should never befriend something if there’s a possibility it may take a fancy to eating you in your sleep.

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

Life is a Curious Thing.