The first time I heard of this book was four or five years ago, when I was eagerly to attending all kinds of book club and activities besides my work, the speaker introduced this book with a joking tone saying an old man try to kill himself so many times but all failed due to a serials of interruptions from new neighbor and other things, which actually leaves him the connections and bonding in the world he then finally give up.
The brief introduction attract me and make me start wondering what is exact happen to him, about the trigger to suicide, and the reason of giving up. Not until recently, I got a chance reading the book, that I just end a relationship, need cure, and this book pops up in my sight, so here's my reading journey starts..
She was color, All the color he had.
Ove, a grumpy old man, with a miserable childhood, he has staunch principles, strict routines, and a short fuse. People call him “the bitter neighbor from hell.” People think him bitter, but must a man be bitter just because he doesn’t walk around with a smile plastered to his face all the time, doesn't always tell people what they want to hear, and remains silent when he has noting in particular to say? People said Ove saw the world in black and white, but what they may not know that she was color, All the color he had.
She is Sonja, a warm and beloved woman who understand him, she lose her legs and her unborn child in an accident, but still hold an optimistic attitude toward world. He would have told people that he never lived before he met her. And not after either.
Meeting her is the most wonderful thing happen to him, and what's more wonderful? She loved him back and they got married.
She said loving someone is like moving into a house, 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 for 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 out side, Which of the floorboards flex slightly when one steps on them or exactly how to open the wardrobe doors without them creaking. These are the little secrets that make it your home.
And life is sweeter when it is shared with other people.
Every man needs to know what he's fighting for.
We all meet ups and downs in our life, the attitude and chooses we make in the hard times decide who we are. 'We can busy ourselves with living or with dying, Ove, we have to move on', Sonja would not have been Sonja if she had let the darkness win.
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.
'She is the only teacher I ever had who didn't think I was thick as plank; She got me reading that ..Shakespeare, I don't know I could even read' said the lad. I feel Sonja worth her life when I read this. She taught trouble students read Shakespeare, find the possibility in hopeless child, they remember her.. as forever.. This recalled me the movie Coco, 'The real death is that no one in the world remembers you', Sonja still alive.
God took her one Child, but gives her more, this is what she said, and she carried this meaning for her life. She fought for what was good, he fought for her.
Death is a strange thing.
Life is a curious thing.
People live their whole lives as it it does not exist, and yet it's often one of the great motivations for living. 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.
When Sonja die, Ove's heart go with her, all he had were all the memories they have been experienced. 'Things not work without her', and new neighbor moved in, with all their connections and bonding, Ove start to have something up to, something look forward to.
Winters turns to springs, springs turn to summers, summers turn to autumns and autumns to winters.
Life will never be the same.
