Chapters (44)
- Cover
- 1. A Man Called Ove Buys a Computer That Is Not a Computer
- 2. (Three Weeks Earlier) A Man Called Ove Makes His Neighborhood Inspection
- 3. A Man Called Ove Backs Up With a Trailer
- 4. A Man Called Ove Does Not Pay a Three-kronor Surcharge
- 5. A Man Called Ove
- 6. A Man Called Ove and a Bicycle That Should Have Been Left Where Bicycles Are Left
- 7. A Man Called Ove Drills a Hole For a Hook
- 8. A Man Who Was Ove and a Pair of His Father’s Old Footprints
- 9. A Man Called Ove Bleeds a Radiator
- 10. A Man Who Was Ove and a House That Ove Built
- 11. A Man Called Ove and a Lanky One Who Can’t Open a Window Without Falling Off a Ladder
- 12. A Man Who Was Ove and One Day He Had Enough
- 13. A Man Called Ove and a Clown Called Beppo
- 14. A Man Who Was Ove and a Woman on a Train
- 15. A Man Called Ove and a Delayed Train
- 16. A Man Who Was Ove and a Truck in the Forest
- 17. A Man Called Ove and a Cat Annoyance in a Snowdrift
- 18. A Man Who Was Ove and a Cat Called Ernest
- 19. A Man Called Ove and a Cat That Was Broken When He Came
- 20. A Man Called Ove and an Intruder
- 21. A Man Who Was Ove and Countries Where They Play Foreign Music in Restaurants
- 22. A Man Called Ove and Someone in a Garage
- 23. A Man Who Was Ove and a Bus That Never Got There
- 24. A Man Called Ove and a Brat Who Draws in Color
- 25. A Man Called Ove and a Piece of Corrugated Iron
- 26. A Man Called Ove and a Society Where No One Can Repair a Bicycle Any More
- 27. A Man Called Ove and a Driving Lesson
- 28. A Man Who Was Ove and a Man Who Was Rune
- 29. A Man Called Ove and a Bender
- 30. A Man Called Ove and a Society Without Him
- 31. A Man Called Ove Backs Up a Trailer. Again.
- 32. A Man Called Ove Isn’t Running a Damned Hotel
- 33. A Man Called Ove and an Inspection Tour That Is Not the Usual
- 34. A Man Called Ove and a Boy in the House Next Door
- 35. A Man Called Ove and Social Incompetence
- 36. A Man Called Ove and a Whiskey
- 37. A Man Called Ove and a Lot of Bastards Sticking Their Noses In
- 38. A Man Called Ove and the End of a Story
- 39. A Man Called Ove
- A Man Called Ove and an Epilogue
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
- Copyright
On the fourth day Sonja got out of bed and started cleaning the cottage with such frenetic energy that Ove kept out of her way, in the way that insightful folk avoid an oncoming tornado. He meandered about the farm, looking for things to do. He rebuilt the woodshed, which had collapsed in one of the winter storms. In the coming days he filled it with newly cut wood. Mowed the grass. Lopped overhanging branches from the surrounding forest. Late on the evening of the sixth day they called from the grocery store.
Everyone called it an accident, of course. But no one who had met Ernest could believe that he had run out in front of a car by accident. Sorrow does strange things to living creatures. Ove drove faster than he had ever driven on the roads that night. Sonja held Ernest’s big head in her hands all the way. He was still breathing when they made it to the vet, but his injuries were far too serious, the loss of blood too great.
After two hours crouching at his side in the operating room, Sonja kissed the cat’s wide brow and whispered, “Good-bye, darling Ernest.” And then, as if the words were coming out of her mouth wrapped in whisks of cloud: “And good-bye to you, my darling father.”
And then the cat closed his eyes and died.
When Sonja came out of the waiting room she rested her forehead heavily against Ove’s broad chest.
“I feel so much loss, Ove. Loss, as if my heart was beating outside my body.”
They stood in silence for a long time, with their arms around each other. And at long last she lifted her face towards his, and looked into his eyes with great seriousness.
“You have to love me twice as much now,” she said.
And then Ove lied to her for the second—and last—time: he said that he would. Even though he knew it wasn’t possible for him to love her any more than he already did.