Fredrik Backman appreciation post

One of my favourite authors and a kindly guide navigating me through Swedish culture is Fredrik Backman.

A Man Called Ove is one of me all time favourite reads. An unlikely love story that captures the complexities of life in the simplest of forms.

”He was a man of black and white. And she was colour. All the colour he had.”
- A Man Called Ove.

If you enjoyed Ove’s story, you should also enjoy it’s other, Britt Marie Was Here.

A Man Called Ove and Britt Marie Was Here

Fredrik Backman captures the complexities of life in a simple style of writing that still feels effortless and skilled. His stories are so full of love for people in all their quirks and oddities that you can’t help but get behind his characters and support them. Backman’s simple stories carry such depth. The cleverness of his text delivers sparks of satisfaction to my brain while my heart, looking for a soul connection is also fulfilled.

I live in the hope that people are essentially good, perhaps my main man Fredrik does also and that’s why I come away from his stories feeling warm. There is beauty and truth to be found in people if you give them the chance to show you.

Britt Marie Was Here is also an unlikely love story and like Ove, Britt Marie finds it is the goodness in other people that brings out the best in ourselves. It is what we go through life in search of, a human connection that can light up infinite skies of endless possibility for each other.

I came away from these two books with the same thoughts, people can be amazing and I always want to live in the belief that people can be amazing.

“At a certain age almost all the questions a person asks him or herself are really just about one thing: how should you live your life?”
-Britt Marie Was Here.