“The Secret Life of Mr Roos” by Håkan Nesser

The Secret Life of Mr Roos by Håkan Nesser

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“Events, always so infernally overestimated, are nothing compared to the parentheses around the spaces in between. You do well to bear that in mind, all you people who blindly rush about the world and think you are on the way somewhere – everything is in the pauses. It is also worth noting that expensive whisky tastes significantly better than the cheap kind. Now I am done and have nothing more to add.”

Let’s be clear from the start here: don’t pick up this book if you’re looking for a mystery or a murder or a detective story. It’s not crime fiction, and you’ll end up disappointed if that’s what you’re looking for. It’s something else entirely — a quiet story of life slowly wasted in monotony until one day, at nearly sixty, a man opens himself to the possibility of gentle, fragile almost-happiness.

“An hour and a half passed, and it was in the course of those ninety minutes, as Valdemar sat behind the wheel, watching the birds in flight beneath the clear skies of a May morning, with the light playing over the fields and over the veins on his hands, where his blood pumped round with the aid of his trusty old heart, that he realized it was at times like this his soul made a space for itself in the world and set up home there. At exactly these times.”

Valdemar Roos is viewed by people as an equivalent of a glass of tepid water. “Boring” is the word that comes to mind. His is not a life that lends itself to winning money, secretly quitting a job and finding a secret little cottage in the woods, unbeknownst to everyone around him – not like anyone would care. And it would take a sudden life turn to bring him face to face with a young runaway from a residential rehab program, and from that a turn in life that nobody would have predicted.

“What the devil is it you want to wring out of your remaining years here on earth, Ante Valdemar Roos?”

It’s a melancholic story, drenched in wistful sadness and quiet resignation. It combines sadness and gentle hint of humor in strange ways — like sad clowns that are anything but funny. In a way it made me remember A Man Called Ove, but less heartwarming and much more melancholic. There’s loneliness and sadness and meeting of two souls craving real human connection. And you know the brief happiness is doomed, and cherish it even more because of it. Because you never know when that flash of something blindingly real will burn up your dull existence.

Oh, and the side quest of a graffiti crime solving by Barbarotti also happens, for a much-needed moment of levity.

4 stars.

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Buddy read with William, Nat K, Mark and Neale — although I’m about 3 months late finishing it. Sorry ‘bout that…

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