Fredrik Backman - A Man Called Ove - A Novel

Adrian gets the Saab. Everything else is for you to take care of. You’ve got the house keys. The cat eats tuna fish twice per day and doesn’t like shitting in other people’s houses. Please respect that. There is a lawyer in town who has all the bank papers and so on. There is an account with 11,563,013 kronor and 67 öre. From Sonja’s dad. The old man had shares. He was mean as hell. Me and Sonja never knew what to do with it. Your kids should get a million each when they turn eighteen, and Jimmy’s girl should get the same. The rest is yours. But please don’t let Patrick bloody take care of it. Sonja would have liked you. Don’t let the new neighbors drive in the residential area.

Ove

At the bottom of the sheet he’s written in capitals “YOU ARE NOT A COMPLETE IDIOT!” And after that, a smiley, as Nasanin has taught him.

There are clear instructions in the letters about the funeral, which mustn’t under any circumstances “be made a bloody fuss of.” Ove doesn’t want any ceremony, he only wants to be thrown in the ground next to Sonja and that’s all. “No people. No messing about!” he states firmly and clearly to Parvaneh.

More than three hundred people come to the funeral.

When Patrick, Parvaneh, and the girls come in there are people standing all along the walls and aisles. Everyone holds lit candles with “Sonja’s Fund” engraved on them. Because that is what Parvaneh has decided to use most of Ove’s money for: a charity fund for orphaned children. Her eyes are swollen with tears; her throat is so dry that she has felt as if she’s panting for air for several days now. The sight of the candles eases something in her breathing. And when Patrick sees all the people who have come to say their farewells to Ove, he elbows her gently in her side and grins with satisfaction.

“Shit. Ove would have hated this, wouldn’t he?”

And then she laughs. Because he really would have.

In the evening she shows a young, recently married couple around Ove and Sonja’s house. The woman is pregnant. Her eyes glitter as she walks through the rooms, the way eyes glitter when a person imagines her child’s future memories unfolding there on the floor. Her husband is obviously much less pleased with the place. He’s wearing a pair of carpenter’s trousers and he mostly goes around kicking the baseboards suspiciously and looking annoyed. Parvaneh obviously knows it doesn’t make any difference; she can see in the girl’s eyes that the decision has already been made. But when the young man asks in a sullen tone about “that garage place” mentioned in the ad, Parvaneh looks him up and down carefully, nods drily, and asks what car he drives. The young man straightens up for the first time, smiles an almost undetectable smile, and looks her right in the eye with the sort of indomitable pride that only one word can convey.

“Saab.”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Jonas Cramby. Brilliant journalist and a real gentleman. Because you discovered Ove and gave him a name that first time, and for so generously allowing me to carry on with his story.

John Häggblom. My editor. Because in a gifted and scrupulous manner you advised me on all my linguistic failings, and because you patiently and humbly accepted all the times I totally ignored your advice.

Rolf Backman. My father. Because I hope I am unlike you in the smallest possible number of ways.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Photograph by Henric Lindsten

Fredrik Backman is a Swedish blogger and columnist. He is author of a work of nonfiction, Things My Son Needs to Know About Life, and A Man Called Ove , his first novel, which has sold more than 500,000 copies in its native country and will be published in more than twenty-five languages all over the world. He was reported the most successful author in Sweden in 2013.

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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2014 by Fredrik Backman

Translation © 2013 by Henning Koch

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First Atria Books hardcover edition July 2014.

First published in Great Britain in 2014 by Hodder & Stoughton.

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Interior design by Paul Dippolito

Jacket design by Alan Dingman

Jacket photographs by Getty and Shutterstock

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Backman, Fredrik, 1981–

[Man som heter Ove. English]

A man called Ove : a novel / by Fredrik Backman.—First Atria Books hardcover edition.

pages cm

I. Title.

PT9877.12.A32M3613 2014

839.73’8—dc23 2014015618

ISBN 978-1-4767-3801-7

ISBN 978-1-4767-3803-1(ebook)

Contents

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