Fredrik Backman - A Man Called Ove - A Novel

“They . . . sorry, Ove, don’t worry about what they’ve written! You know how children are. My father died in Iran. They’ve never had a . . . you know . . .”

Ove takes no notice of her, just takes the drawings in his hand and goes to the kitchen drawers.

“They can call me whatever they like. No need for you to stick your bloody nose in.”

And then he puts up the drawings one by one on the fridge. The one that says “To Granddad” gets the top spot. She tries not to smile. Doesn’t succeed very convincingly.

“Stop sniggering and put the coffee on instead. I’m fetching down the cardboard boxes from the attic,” Ove mumbles and limps off towards the stairs.

So, that evening, Parvaneh and the girls help him clean up his house. They wrap each and every one of Sonja’s things in newspaper and carefully pack all her clothes into boxes. One memory at a time. And at half past nine when everything is done and the girls have fallen asleep on Ove’s sofa with newsprint on their fingertips and chocolate ice cream around the corners of their mouths, then Parvaneh’s hand suddenly grips Ove’s upper arm like a voracious metal claw. And when Ove growls, “OUCH!” she growls back, “SHUSH!”

And then they have to go back to the hospital.

It’s a boy.

A MAN CALLED OVE AND AN EPILOGUE

Life is a Curious Thing.

Winter turns to spring and Parvaneh passes her driving test. Ove teaches Adrian how to change tires. The kid may have bought a Toyota, but that doesn’t mean he’s entirely beyond help, Ove explains to Sonja when he visits her one Sunday in April. Then he shows her some photographs of Parvaneh’s little boy. Four months old and as fat as a seal pup. Patrick has tried to force one of those cell phone camera things on Ove, but he doesn’t trust them. So he walks around with a thick wad of paper copies inside his wallet instead, held together by a rubber band. Shows everyone he meets. Even the people who work at the florist’s.

Spring turns to summer and by the time autumn sets in, the annoying journalist, Lena, moves in with that Audi-driving fop Anders. Ove drives the moving van; he has no faith in those jackasses being able to back it between the houses without ruining his new mailbox, so it’s just as well.

Of course, Lena doesn’t believe in “marriage as an institution,” Ove tells Sonja with a snort that seems to suggest there have been certain discussions about this along the street, but the following spring he comes to the grave and shows her another wedding invitation.

Mirsad wears a black suit and is literally shaking with nervousness. Parvaneh has to give him a shot of tequila before he goes into the Town Hall. Jimmy is waiting inside. Ove is his best man. Has bought a new suit. They have the party at Amel’s café; the stocky man tries to hold a speech three times but he’s too overwhelmed by emotion to manage more than a few stuttering words. On the other hand, he names a sandwich after Jimmy, and Jimmy himself says it’s the most magnificent present he’s ever had. He continues living in his mother’s house with Mirsad. The following year they adopt a little girl. Jimmy brings her along to Anita and Rune’s every afternoon, without fail, at three o’clock when they have coffee.

Rune doesn’t get better. In certain periods, he is virtually uncontactable for days at a time. But every time that little girl runs into his and Anita’s house with her arms reaching out for Anita, a euphoric smile fills his entire face. Without exception.

Even more houses are built in the area. In a few years it goes from a quiet backwater to a city district. Which obviously doesn’t make Patrick more competent when it comes to opening windows or assembling IKEA wardrobes. One morning he turns up at Ove’s door with two men more or less the same age as himself, who apparently are also not so good at it. Both own houses a few streets down, they explain. They’re restoring them but they’ve run into problems with joists over partition walls. They don’t know what to do. But Ove knows, of course. He mutters something that sounds a little like “fools” and goes over to show them. The next day another neighbor turns up. And then another. And then another. Within a few months Ove has been everywhere, fixing this and that in almost every house within a radius of four streets. Obviously he always grumbles about people’s incompetence. But when he’s by himself by Sonja’s grave he does mumble on one occasion, “Sometimes it can be quite nice having something to get on with in the daytime.”

Parvaneh’s daughters celebrate their birthdays and before anyone can explain how it happened, the three-year-old has become a six-year-old, in that disrespectful way often noted in three-year-olds. Ove goes with her to school on her first day. She teaches him to insert smileys into a text message, and he makes her promise never to tell Patrick that he’s got himself a cell phone. The eight-year-old, who in a similar disrespectful way has now turned ten, holds her first pajama party. Their little brother disperses his toys all over Ove’s kitchen. Ove builds a splash pond for him in his outside space but when someone calls it a splash pond Ove snorts that “Actually it’s a bloody pool, isn’t it!” Anders is voted in again as the chairman of the Residents’ Association. Parvaneh buys a new lawn mower for the lawn behind the houses.

Summers turn to autumns and autumns to winters and one icy-cold Sunday morning in November, almost four years to the day since Parvaneh and Patrick backed that trailer into Ove’s mailbox, Parvaneh wakes up as if someone just placed a frozen hand on her brow. She gets up, looks out of her bedroom window, and checks the time. It’s quarter past eight. The snow hasn’t been cleared outside Ove’s house.

She runs across the little road in her dressing gown and slippers, calling out his name. Opens the door with the spare key he’s given her, charges into the living room, stumbles up the stairs in her wet slippers, and, with her heart in her mouth, fumbles her way into his bedroom.

Ove looks like he’s sleeping very deeply. She has never seen his face looking so peaceful. The cat lies at his side with its little head carefully resting in the palm of his hand. When it sees Parvaneh it slowly, slowly stands up, as if only then fully accepting what has happened, then climbs into her lap. They sit together on the bedside and Parvaneh caresses the thin locks of hair on Ove’s head until the ambulance crew gets there and, with tender and gentle words and movements, explains that they have to take the body away. Then she leans forward and whispers, “Give my love to Sonja and thank her for the loan,” into his ear. Then she takes the big envelope from the bedside table on which is written, in longhand, “To Parvaneh,” and goes back down the stairs.

It’s full of documents and certificates, original plans of the house, instruction booklets for the video player, the service booklet for the Saab. Bank account numbers and insurance policy documents. The telephone number of a lawyer to whom Ove has “left all his affairs.” A whole life assembled and entered into files. The closing of accounts. At the top is a letter for her. She sits down at the kitchen table to read it. It’s not long. As if Ove knew she’ll only drench it in tears before she gets to the end.