BACKMAN, Fredrik - A Man Named Ove

A MAN NAMED OVE

By  Fredrik Backman

QUOTES FOR DISCUSSION

"So this is one of those O-pads, is it?"

Pg. 1

"No I don't want a 'lap top.' I want a computer."

Pg. 2

Might have known, thought Ove. On this street no one took the trouble to get up any earlier than they had to.

Pg. 6

He walked across the parking area and strolled back and forth along all the garages to make sure none of them had been burgled in the night or set on fire by gangs of vandals. Such things had never happened around here, but then Ove had never skipped one of his inspections either.

Pg.7

Not that anyone had asked Ove to do it, but if men like Ove didn't take the initiative there'd be anarchy. There'd be bags of trash all over the place.

Pg.8

Ove has paid his mortgage. Done his duty. Gone to work. Never taken a day of sick leave. ... No one does that anymore, no one takes responsibility.

Pg. 11

But Ove's hook is going to be as solid as a rock. He's going to screw it in so hard that when the house is demolished it'll be the last thing standing.

Pg. 12

They were all unchanged from yesterday, but he turned them down a little more just to be on the safe side.

Pg. 25

He always knows when it's about to snow because his wife starts nagging about turning up the heat in the bedroom.

Pg. 25

Once the generator has charged up the fan heater, it runs for thirty minutes on the little battery Ove has hooked it up to, and his wife keeps it on her side of the bed. She can run it a couple of times before they go to bed, but only a couple - no need to be lavish about it ("Diesel isn't free, you know.")

Pg. 25

"It's getting worse and worse,"

Pg. 28

This entailed a longer route to the shopping center, but there were fewer traffic lights.

Pg. 29

Apparently there was no longer any value in being able to lay your own floorboards or refurbish a room with rising damp or change winter tires.

Pg. 37

Tom had worked many years at the railway, but Ove never heard any of his father's colleagues say one good word about Tom. He was dishonest and malicious, that's what they said after couple bottles of pilsner at their parties. But he'd never heard it from his dad.

Pg. 43

The director says you are just like your father.

Pg. 73

And that's how he ended up in his father's old boots. He worked hard, never complained, and was never ill.

Pg. 73

People always said Ove and Ove's wife were like night and day.

Pg. 108

She loved only abstract things like music and books 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.

Pg. 108

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

Pg. 131

When he was driving somewhere each other up schedules and plans and decided where they'd fill up and when they'd stop for coffee, all in the interest of making the trip as time efficient as possible. He studied maps and estimated exactly how long each leg of the journey would take and how they should avoid rush-hour traffic.

Pg. 140

Ove and her father sat in buttoned-up silence opposite each other, staring down at their food for almost an hour, while she tried to encourage some form of civilized conversation. Neither of the men could quite understand what they were doing there, apart from the fact that it was important to the only woman either of them cared about.

pg 153

... avoiding her gaze by suddenly feeling incredibly interested in the hall lamp.

Pg. 159

On the fourth day Sonja got out of bed and started cleaning the cottage with such frenetic energy that Ove kept out of her way, in the way that insightful folk avoid an oncoming tornado.

Pg. 168

He distracts himself from this emotion by assiduously inspecting the TV remote control.

Pg. 162

They sat behind desks made of a light-colored wood in various municipal offices and they apparently had endless amounts of time to instruct Ove in what documents had to be filled in for various purposes, but no time at all to discuss the measures that were needed for Sonja to get better.

Pg. 202

The ones who arrived in the classroom with police escorts yet when they left could recite four-hundred-year-old poetry.

Pg. 205

Every human being needs to know which is fighting for. ...And she fought for what was good. For the children she never had.

Pg. 205

Both men, once as close as man of that sort could be, stare at each other. One of them a man who refuses to forget the past, and one who can't remember it at all.

Pg. 218

She takes I half a step out the door, as if she wants to say something more. Maybe something about Sonja, how deeply she misses her best friend. How she misses what they had, all four of them, when they first moved onto this street almost forty years ago. How she even misses the way Rune and Ove used to argue.

Pg. 222

Many people find it difficult living with someone who likes to be alone. It grates on those who can handle it themselves.

Pg. 224

I had a look at a Renault.

Pg.229