A Man Called Ove

by Fredrik Backman

They never had much, but they always had enough.

Maybe to her destiny was ‘something’, that was none of his business. But to him, destiny was ‘someone’.

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

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

‘You only need one ray of light to chase all the shadows away,’ she

he never lived before he met her. And not after, either.

‘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,’

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

he understood very keenly how it was to receive her love when no one else could understand why he was worthy of it.

And knew that this pain was for ever.

the tip of her nose in the pit between his throat and his shoulder.

‘Other wives get annoyed because their husbands don’t notice when they have their hair cut. When I have a haircut my husband is annoyed with me for days because I don’t look the same,’

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

And then she left him alone in a world where he no longer understood the language.

‘What sort of love is it if you hand someone over when it gets difficult?’

‘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.

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.

A whole life assembled and entered into files.