A man called Ove

Autor: Fredrik Backman

Nu este așa ușor să îmi adun gândurile după această carte, pentru că tot aud un Ove bombănind despre bărbații în cămăși albe, despre bărbații care nu spun povești despre acțiunile altora, despre SAAB, despre cum iubirea a fost toată culoarea din viața lui și continuă să bombăne tot felul de istorioare la nesfârșit.

Este clar, nimeni nu este Ove, dar este și mai clar că fiecare are un mic Ove morocănos în interiorul lui. Îmi este imposibil să vorbesc despre carte, este ca și cum aș fi pusă să explic un sentiment, o emoție; nu pot decât să zic decât că m-a acaparat cu totul și că o RECOMAND cu drag. Am citit-o râzând, am citit-o cu un nod în gât, am trăit fiecare pagină și am simțit cât de prețioasă este viața, iar când s-a terminat parcă a fost ruptă o vrajă.

“He was a man of black and white.

And she was colour. All the colour he had.

The only thing he had ever loved until he saw her was numbers.”

“He worked for the railways for five years. Then one morning he boarded a train and saw her for the first time. That was the first time he laughed since his father’s died.

And life was never again the same.”

“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.”

“People always said Ove and Ove’s wife were like night and day. Ove realized full well, of course, that he was the night. It didn’t matter to him. On the other hand it always amused his wife when someone said it, because she could the point out whilst giggling that people only thought Ove was the bight because he was to mean to turn on the sun.”

“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 man.”

“Ove had never been asked how he lived before he met her. But if anyone had asked him, he would answered that he didn’t.”

“In the end she found out how he got the scars. And when one of her girlfriends asked why she loved him she answered that most men ran away from an inferno. But men like Ove ran into it.”

“Most people never did understand, Ove often commented. But then people had no idea of loyalty these days. The car was just ‘a means of transport’ and the road just a complication arising between two points.”

“So there were certainly people who thought that feelings could not be judged by looking at cars. But they were wrong.”

“’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 through the door to explain that a terrible mistake had been made, you aren’t actually supposed to live in a wonderful place like this. Then over the years the walls become weathered, the wood spliters 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.’”

“Broadly speaking there are two kind of people. Those who understand how extremely useful white cables can be, and those who don’t.”

“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 that they go into the waiting room long before it has announced its arrival. We fear it, yet most of us fear more that anything that it may take someone other than ourselves. For the greatest fear of death is always that will pass by us. And leave us there alone.”