A Man Called Ove

by Fredrik Backman

The Blonde Weed, Ove calls her. Tottering round the lanes like an inebriated panda on heels as long as box spanners, with clown-paint all over her face and sunglasses so big that one can’t tell whether they’re a pair of glasses or some kind of helmet.

It’s a strange thing, becoming an orphan at sixteen. To lose your family long before you’ve had time to create your own to replace it. It’s a very specific sort of loneliness.

She often said that ‘all roads lead to something you were always predestined to do’ . And for her, perhaps, it was something. But for Ove it was someone.

So sweet

‘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,’

If there was one thing that made people forget to dislike one, it was when they were given the opportunity to talk about themselves.

And time is a curious thing. Most of us only live for the time that lies right ahead of us. A few days, weeks, years. One of the most painful moments in a person’s life probably comes with the insight that an age has been reached when there is more to look back on than ahead. And when time no longer lies ahead of one, other things have to be lived for. Memories, perhaps. Afternoons in the sun with someone’s hand clutched in one’s own. The fragrance of flowerbeds in fresh bloom. Sundays in a café. Grandchildren, perhaps. One finds a way of living for the sake of someone else’s future. And it wasn’t as if Ove also died when Sonja left him. He just stopped living. Grief is a strange thing.