I’m no stranger to transition. My husband and I have moved from state to state, from seminary to pastoral ministry, from church to church. Right now, we’re months deep into yet another move — another new house, a new church family, a new school for our kids. Transitions can be uncomfortable and unkind. Except for the exception, you can expect loneliness and uncertainty, moments of standing around awkwardly as conversations happen nearby. We feel the need for community deeply because we have lost it.
In Fredrik Backman’s novels, one theme surfaces again and again: belonging. In Britt-Marie Was Here, a persnickety divorcee accompanies a local boy to visit his father in prison, showing her immersion in a new town. In Anxious People, a group of hostages shows compassion to their tearful, non-deranged captor. Or, in Backman’s first novel and New York Times bestseller, a man called Ove finds friendship, love, and redemption through flashbacks and false starts. Once thrown out by life and society, floundering in challenging transitions, Backman’s characters find community in unlikely places and unlikely people.
A Swedish writer, Backman considers himself less an author and more a storyteller. A Man Called Ove, released in 2012, was on the New York Times bestselling list for 42 weeks and sold more than 2.8 million copies. It later enjoyed an American film release as A Man Called Otto (2022), with Tom Hanks playing lead.
Backman’s novels are about soccer, hockey, a neighborhood watch, a bank heist gone wrong — yet they’re about none of these things. They are the background for characters who are a lot like us and like people we love.
When asked what moves him the most in literature, in a 2022 interview published in the New York Times, Backman replied, “Struggling relationships, always. The impossible human experience of just trying to get through the day with everyone you love being somewhat OK at the end of it.” Backman gets to the heart of human experience and longing: We long for community, to be together, to be not alone. We long to see and be seen. Perhaps this is why his characters connect with readers so genuinely. While we may not rob a bank or lose the love of our lives, we know what it’s like to feel desperate. We know what it’s like to live in the fragile place between okay and not okay.
Take Ove (pronounced oo-veh). His story opens at a technology shop, where we find him berating a young assistant. We gather that he’s a crotchety old man, out of touch, ready to hate anyone who likes lunch. We are not inclined to like him. Yet as Backman spends his next pages pulling back the layers of Ove’s life, we begin to see Ove as human, relatable even.
When Ove lost his wife six months before the story opens, he lost his will to live. Interruptions from new neighbors thwart his repeated attempts to take his own life. Flashbacks show us moments that make us feel for him — moments of unfairness and unkindness toward him, moments of loyalty and endurance from him. We begin to root for the man, to hope that others might see what we see in him. We begin to love him.
In this, Backman’s writing captures the sacredness of the imago Dei. We weren’t meant to be alone. We see this in creation: God made Adam in his image and likeness and gave him purpose. Adam was to work the ground and obey God’s word in heaven on earth. At first glance, he had everything he could possibly want — but then God declared something was missing: “It is not good that the man should be alone,” Genesis 2:18 says. Man was made for community, Herman Bavinck has written — to “express himself, reveal himself, and give himself. He must be able to pour out his heart, to give form to his feelings.” God’s pronouncement of “not good” shows us that loneliness is the antithesis of who he made us to be.
To be human is to long for friendship, intimacy, partnership. It’s why we look at the friend tribe on social media and want it for ourselves. It’s why we feel so deeply when friendships fall apart or are betrayed. It’s why we can read Backman’s stories about life-altering transitions, loneliness, and community and resonate with them: We long both to see and be seen by another, and these stories rouse our hope that it’s possible this side of heaven.
There’s a moment in Genesis that bathes this truth in light. After Sarah dealt harshly with Hagar, Hagar fled into the desert, and God found her there. Face to face, the Lord talked with Hagar and encouraged her with the future. Lest we miss the importance of this moment, Scripture spells it out for us: “She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: ‘You are the God who sees me,’ for she said, ‘I have now seen the One who sees me’” (Gen 16:13). The well where she met the Lord was called Beer Lahai Roi, which means “the well of the one who sees me.”
Hagar’s pronouncement of God as a “God of seeing” is a display of his heart toward us. He is neither distant nor unaware. No, he keeps watch over the evil and the good, seeing all — seeing us (Prov 15:3). In Christ, we’re not unknown, but known; not ignored, but acknowledged; not hidden, but seen.
By seeing souls in front of us, we participate in the sacred work of imaging the God who sees. C.S. Lewis explained this in his sermon “The Weight of Glory” in 1942: “There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.” While we may resonate with these truths, we struggle to apply them. In 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General deemed social isolation and loneliness a “critical public health concern.” Where do we even begin?
Maybe Backman offers a safe place to begin the rehearsal of the sacred act of seeing — really seeing — those around us. At first glance, the grumpy customer at the technology store seems unworthy of our attention, but when we see him, we behold a holy object presented to our senses. We see the image of God in him — even if he is written between pages and stored on our shelves.
