A Man Called Ove

by Fredrik Backman

thought he was a pony. He came and went in her father’s

sorrow

is unreliable in that way. When people don’t share it there’s a good chance that it will drive them apart instead.

into the passenger seat and the wheelchair into the boot. By six o’clock they were at the kitchen table having their dinner, usually meat and potatoes and sauce. Ove’s

wanted it to look as if he’d meant to stumble into it. ‘What? Oh … that trailer.

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