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 it that they go into the waiting room long before it has announced its arrival. 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.

Another silence, as if two gunmen have suddenly realized they have forgotten to bring their pistols.

Then Mum died. And Dad grew even quieter. As if she took away with her the few words he'd possessed.

Had Ove been the sort of man who contemplated how and when one became the sort of man one was, he might have said this was the day he learned that right has to be right.

He contented himself with remembering that on this day he'd decided to be as little unlike his father as possible.