A Man Called Ove

by Fredrik Backman

People said Ove saw the world in black and white. But she was colour. All the colour he had.

You miss the strangest things when you lose someone. Little things. Smiles. The way she turned round in her sleep. Even repainting a room for her.

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

that laughter of hers which, for the rest of his life, would make him feel as if someone was running around barefoot on the inside of his breast.

But if anyone had asked, he would have told them that he never lived before he met her. And not after, either.

Not many men of his kind were made any more, Sonja had understood. So she was holding on to this one. Maybe he didn’t write her poems or serenade her with songs or come home with expensive gifts. But no other boy had gone the wrong way on the train for hours every day just because he liked sitting next to her while she spoke.

When Ove protested she just smiled and took his big hands in hers and kissed them, explaining that when a person gives to another person it’s not just the receiver who’s blessed. It’s the giver.

‘So while I was sleeping you sneaked out and helped people in need … and mended their fences? People can say whatever they like about you, Ove. But you’re the strangest superhero I ever heard about.’

‘We can busy ourselves with living or with dying, Ove. We have to move on.’

Every human being needs to know what she’s fighting for. That was what they said. And she fought for what was good. For the children she never had. And Ove fought for her. Because that was the only thing in this world he really knew.

We always think there’s enough time to do things with other people. Time to say things to them. And then something happens and then we stand there holding on to words like ‘if’.

‘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.

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.