A Man Called Ove

Instead of maintaining the pattern of juxtaposing between the past and present, Chapter 20 remains in the present—but takes a backward look. It starts with Ove and the cat arriving at home. Ove is shocked to see that Rune and Anita’s garage door is open, which it normally never is.

A brief look at the past makes it clear just how close Ove and Sonja were to Rune and Anita. Of course, it was Sonja who pushed Ove to be friendly with Rune: “He had a proper job and he didn’t talk more than he had to. Admittedly he did drive a Volvo but, as Ove’s wife kept insisting, this did not necessarily make a person immoral” (155). Anita and Sonja were pregnant at the same time, and sometimes the couples would dine together. When Ove and Sonja married, Anita and Rune were witnesses.

In having provided this backstory, the narrative flashes back to the present. A journalist, Lena, is at Ove’s house when he arrives. She wants to interview him about how he saved the man’s life on the train platform yesterday, but he rebuffs her.

The sight of the white Škoda (the car driven by the council people) interrupts Ove’s interaction with Lena. A man prepares to drive the car through the neighborhood, but Ove stands in the way, telling the man he’s not permitted to drive here. The man says he has special permission from the council. Ove asks what the man is doing there, and he responds that he’s there to take Rune into care. Ove replies, “And if Anita doesn’t want that?” (160). The man tells Ove that it’s up to “the investigation team” (160) and not Anita. The man looks at Ove as if what “[he] had said was nothing more than the inarticulate raving of a senile old man” (160).

The man then unexpectedly addresses Ove by name. This appalls Ove, who asks how he knows his name. The man responds, “I know a lot about you” (161). The Škoda drives off, leaving Ove defeated. Humiliated, Ove bypasses Lena and goes inside. He notes that the council people haven’t been there since he and Sonja returned from Spain, “after the accident” (162).

Chapter 20 concludes with an implicit promise to finally reveal what happened to Sonja. Although it is more than halfway through the book, the reader still doesn’t know the mystery of why she was in a wheelchair. 

Chapter 21 provides an account of a one-week holiday Ove and Sonja take together after they are married, while she is pregnant. They take a coach bus to Spain: “Sonja insisted that coaches were ‘romantic,’ and that sort of thing was incredibly important, Ove had learned” (163).

Spain is not a country for Ove: The tradition of taking a siesta in the middle of the day, for instance, doesn’t fit his hard-working attitude. To Ove, it’s a country for “playing foreign music in restaurants and going to bed in the middle of the day” (163). Since Sonja is pregnant and wants to sleep a lot, however, she takes part in the midday tradition.

Throughout the entire week, Sonja takes her siestas and Ove, always in need of structure, keeps busy. He sees a man putting up a fence “the wrong way” (166), so he takes over the job to ensure it’s done right. Then he helps a man drag a horse out of some mud. He also builds a new exterior wall on a church building. Ove never mentions these things to Sonja. Years later, she finds out and responds, “People can say whatever they like about you, Ove. But you’re the strangest superhero I ever heard about” (166).

On the coach ride home, Ove feels the child kicking in Sonja’s belly. He tears up, which he tries to hide by gruffly excusing himself, saying he needs the toilet. The chapter concludes ominously: “It was the happiest week of Ove’s life. It was destined to be followed by the very unhappiest” (166).