★★★★☆ | Literary Fiction | Digital | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads
I didn’t expect to enjoy this book as much as I did. This one touched me. Ove felt very real to me. Backman has a gift.
Highlights
People said Ove saw the world in black and white. But she was color. All the color he had.
She loved only abstract things like music and books and strange words. Ove was a man entirely filled with tangible things. He liked screwdrivers and oil filters. He went through life with his hands firmly shoved into his pockets. She danced.
She liked talking and Ove liked keeping quiet. Retrospectively, Ove assumed that was what people meant when they said that people were compatible.
all people at root are time optimists. 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.”
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.