A Man Called Ove

by Fredrik Backman

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,’

This was a world where one became outdated before one’s time was up.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.

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.

‘Every man needs to know what he’s fighting for.’

Every human being needs to know what she’s fighting for.

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

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. You get to know all the nooks and crannies. How to avoid getting the key caught in the lock when it’s cold outside. Which of the floorboards flex slightly when one steps on them or exactly how to open the wardrobe doors without their creaking. These are the little secrets that make it your home.’

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

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.

Something inside a man goes to pieces when he has to bury the only person who ever understood him. There is no time to heal that sort of wound.