Ovey is a stubborn and weird little old man:
Get up at six o'clock every morning and make coffee for two people; tour the neighborhood and silently sort the garbage; put the littered bicycles back in the garage; see what is out of order and the rules and people, and try to correct them.
Seeing whose lawn is not mowed, go up and complain twice, not only that, he will also be mad anytime and anywhere because of unpleasant things. Ovie wanders around the community every day, and people nickname him "Evil Neighbor from Hell."
However, this "evil neighbor" himself is not so happy, he wants to commit suicide...
Ovie once had a wife he loved very much, Sawyer, who was a beautiful woman who embraced everything about Ovie, his stubbornness, his weirdness.
And this stubborn Ovie, who is reluctant to accept new things, also unexpectedly falls in love with Sawyer, who is completely different from himself, and he reverently holds his ordinary and heavy love in his hands and dedicates it to the angelic beauty of Sawyer, and feels extremely happy.
And Sawyer, like a real angel, washes Ovi's soul.
However, just as good people do not live long and evils live for a thousand years, Soya went first than Ovi. A few years after their marriage, Sawyer was in a wheelchair, she couldn't have children, and she had cancer, all of which drove Ovie crazy.
Now, after every morning, Ovie returns to his room—his wife, Soya's photographs and belongings, still laid out as usual, as if she were watching him every moment.
He lived, walked, ate and drank, cursed and grinned, and became angry under her gaze; he talked to himself under her gaze, and at the same time he nagged at her. He would regularly buy pink flowers to visit her grave and talk to her, though not much.
Living in thoughts like this every day will drive Ovi crazy. So he wanted to die, to where Sawyer was.
So he bought ropes and nails and wanted to hang himself at home. He thought so thoughtfully that he even laid plastic paper on the floor to prevent himself from being found and carrying the body when others would stain the floor.
In fact, some shujun saw this and felt that in some aspects Ouwei was still quite cute, and it is estimated that Soya also saw this at the beginning.
But on the morning Ove was about to commit suicide, there was a lot of noise outside, and his mailbox was broken by the new neighbor.
It turned out that it was a couple and two daughters next door who had moved in. This is good, this family completely disrupted Ovi's suicide plan, giving him a nuisance.
Whenever Ovie wanted to be angry with his neighbor, he always thought of his wife Sawyer: "If Sawyer knew that I treated a pregnant woman like this, she would be unhappy."
So he began to help the new neighbor as he "helped" other neighbors, because he felt that doing so would satisfy Sawyer.
Yes, although Ovie was not a person who wanted to be close to people, he had always consciously or unconsciously lived himself into the likeness of Sawyer.
Even though the mouth is always complaining, the body has always been honest in active life and friendly to help the neighbors.
In addition to hanging, Ove also tried many other suicide methods, such as shooting the temple with a gun and inhaling carbon dioxide in the car, these inevitable plans, all of which happened to be inadvertently interrupted by the neighbors.
The newly moved neighbors, the boy Jimmy on the same block, the lazy cat, and the two gay men in the bar, they will always come uninvited and disrupt Ovie's pursuit of Sawyer, and the road to death will be delayed again and again.
Perhaps, God is still reluctant to let this nosy old man go, so there are so many neighbors who make Ovie "bored", let them accompany Ovie in their own way, warm Ovie, and make him feel that Sawyer is still with him.
The whole book is composed of small episodes of Ovie and these neighbors laughing, but after reading it, some books feel that it is more like a deep love book. Reading and reading, you will cry, you will laugh, you will be healed.
On the surface, Ovie is a stereotypical, miserly, serious, and fierce image, but in fact, he is very willing to help others and knows how to love.
Although it may not be seen on the surface, we believe that when the neighbors' little daughters paint crooked pictures for him and call him "Grandpa", he rejoices;
When what he saw as an "idiot" female neighbor finally learned to drive, he was happy;
When the frozen cat finally recovered in Jimmy's arms, he was also happy.
But in the end, the strange old man passed away, not from suicide, but from a heart attack.
Death is really a strange thing. People spend their entire lives pretending that it doesn't exist, even though it's one of life's greatest motivations.
Some people have enough time to know death, they live harder, more persistently, more vigorously.
Some people don't realize how beautiful its antonyms are until it's actually approaching.
Perhaps when we finish reading this book, we will try to understand the true meaning of life, and we will be able to face all kinds of troubles and misunderstandings and hostility of others calmly.
