A Man Called Ove

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2012

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Chapters 16-18Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 16 Summary: “A Man Who Was Ove and a Truck in the Forest”

Chapter 16 continues the pattern of alternating between past and present, as it jumps back to the past. This time, however, we see some of Sonja’s perspective. Before Ove, “there were really only three things she loved unconditionally in her life: books, her father and cats” (131)—including a big farm cat named Ernest, after Ernest Hemingway.

She has plenty of suitors before Ove. When she chooses him, her girlfriends question her choice. They tell her “he’d been a grumpy old man since he started junior school” (131). Even Ove was aware of this attitude: “Ove knew very well that her friends couldn’t understand why she married him” (32). Unlike other men, however, Ove looks at Sonja as if she’s the only girl in the world.

Although they are so different, their relationship works. Sonja teaches kids “with learning difficulties to read and write, and she got them to read Shakespeare’s collected works. […] [S]he never managed to make Ove read a single Shakespeare play” (133). However, once they move into a home together, he spends hours building her beautiful bookcases. She tells him she loves him in response; he nods.

Sonja’s mother died in childbirth, and her father eventually accepts Ove. She brings Ove home for dinner at her father’s, who lives in the forest outside the town and distrusts a young man “from town” like Ove. They don’t talk much at first, but then they find a common ground regarding the father’s old truck—Ove offers to look at the faulty engine. Sonja knows Ove has won her father over when he asks her whether Ove fishes. When she says no, her father tells her that Ove will have to learn then: “Sonja had never heard him give anyone a higher compliment” (137).

Chapter 17 Summary: “A Man Called Ove and a Cat Annoyance in a Snowdrift”

Chapter 17 returns to the present, where Ove has noticed a cat-shaped hole in a snowdrift outside his home. Parvaneh has arrived on the scene, and after Ove refuses to do so, she gets the cat out and demands Ove let her into his home with it. Upon her request, he goes to get blankets. When he returns with them, he finds Jimmy, an overweight young neighbor, in his home. Jimmy heard shouting, so he has come to make sure everything is okay. Ove is not happy with the presence of yet another intruder.

Parvaneh tries to heat the cat up with blankets in her arms but it doesn’t work. Jimmy then takes his shirt off so that he can heat the cat with his body, to Ove’s total horror. While Parvaneh and Jimmy chat, this development shocks Ove: Two neighbors and a freezing (now dripping and thawing) cat are in his home. This is total anarchy by Ove’s standards.

When it turns out that the attempts to warm the cat are working, however, “he finds, uneasily, that he’s relieved at the news. He distracts himself from this emotion by assiduously inspecting the TV remote control” (142). Parvaneh then says she’ll heat some water and goes into the kitchen. Then what she finds there causes her to abruptly stop: The counters have been lowered to accommodate a person in a wheelchair, and tire tracks are all over—the same as those tracks Patrick references in Chapter 7. Sonja was in a wheelchair before her death:

[Parvaneh] looks a bit overwhelmed, as if the realization of what’s happened has only just hit her. […] [E]verywhere are Ove’s wife’s things. Her little decorative objects in the window, her hair grips left on the kitchen table, her handwriting on the Post-it notes on the fridge (142-43).

Parvaneh is contrite and apologizes to Ove for barging into the kitchen. Ove doesn't get angry; instead, he bustles around to heat up the hot water as Parvaneh was planning to do. Parvaneh rests her hand on his shoulder as she apologizes, and “he decides not to push it away” (145). Ove appears to accept her sympathy.

Jimmy interrupts the scene when he calls from the next room, asking whether Ove has anything to eat. Ove brings him a sausage sandwich. Jimmy is thankful. He tells Ove, “You know it was … pretty bad with your wife, Ove. I always liked her. She made, like, the best chow in town” (144). Although Ove previously treated his neighbors with resent—such as when Anita simply said the name “Sonja,” and Ove slammed the door in her face—he now responds differently: “Ove looks at [Jimmy], and for the first time all morning he doesn’t look a bit angry. ‘Yes. She … cooked very well,’ he agrees” (144).

Ove insists the cat can only stay until it’s defrosted, at which time Parvaneh must take it. She claims her children are allergic, but she is clearly lying; it seems she’s intent on forcing Ove to take in the cat. She sees that it might give his sad life some purpose. Likewise, Jimmy maintains that he is also allergic: He’s been holding the cat to his bare skin already for some time, so he’s turning red and developing a rash. Parvaneh says they need to get to the hospital, so Ove will drive them.

Chapter 18 Summary: “A Man Who Was Ove and a Cat Called Ernest”

The narrative jumps back in time. Ove learns to fish, something that ingratiates him further to Sonja’s father (not that he’s the type of man to admit or show this). Ernest is a giant cat that lives with Sonja and her father, and Sonja loves it. Ove doesn’t like cats much, but he tolerates the animal because of his love for Sonja.

When Sonja’s father dies, she is distraught. She doesn’t get out of bed for four days. Then shortly after, Ernest runs into traffic and dies. Ove drives Sonja, holding the cat in her lap, to the veterinarian. He clearly knows how important that cat is to Sonja, especially as she’s just suffered the loss of her father: “Ove drove faster than he had ever drive on the roads at night” (145).

Soon after, they bury the cat beside the lake “where he used to go fishing with Sonja’s father” (148). Sonja then tells Ove she is pregnant and suggests they move together into their own home before the baby comes. His reaction is muted and Ove-like: “He looked thoughtfully at her stomach, as if expecting it to raise some sort of flag. Then he straightened up […] [a]nd nodded sensibly. ‘We’ll have to get a Saab estate, then’” (149).

Chapters 16-18 Analysis

These chapters reveal a softer side of Ove. Firstly, we get to see Sonja’s perspective and finally an answer as to why this bubbly beauty chose grumpy old Ove. Among the other reasons described in Chapter 16, she simply appreciates who he is: “He believed so strongly in things: justice and fair play and hard work and a word where right had to be right” (132). Ove’s “right is right” philosophy doesn’t annoy her but endears him to her.

Chapter 17 demonstrates Ove’s emotional side in a moment that Parvaneh and Jimmy witness. When Parvaneh uncovers the kitchen and realizes that Ove’s wife was in a wheelchair before she died, she’s shocked. She shows Ove sympathy, and instead of shrugging her hand off his shoulder, he accepts her gesture. He also accepts Jimmy’s condolences in an unexpected moment of emotional vulnerability.

Chapter 18 returns to the idea of suicide. Sonja’s old cat Ernest dies after her father’s passing: “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 creature” (145). This implies that sorrow may have similar effects on Ove. There is a parallel between Sonja’s deceased cat Ernest and the cat Ove begrudgingly rescues from the snowdrift. The Cat Annoyance, as Ove aptly names it, becomes a prominent symbol throughout the narrative.