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Contents
A Man Called Ove
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 Anymore
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
My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry
Chapter 1: Tobacco
Chapter 2: Monkey
Chapter 3: Coffee
Chapter 4: Beer
Chapter 5: Lilies
Chapter 6: Cleaning Agents
Chapter 7: Leather
Chapter 8: Rubber
Chapter 9: Soap
Chapter 10: Alcohol
Chapter 11: Protein Bars
Chapter 12: Mint
Chapter 13: Wine
Chapter 14: Tires
Chapter 15: Wood Shavings
Chapter 16: Dust
Chapter 17: Cinnamon Bun
Chapter 18: Smoke
Chapter 19: Sponge Cake Mix
Chapter 20: Clothes Shop
Chapter 21: Candle Grease
Chapter 22: O’Boy
Chapter 23: Dishcloth
Chapter 24: Dreams
Chapter 25: Spruce
Chapter 26: Pizza
Chapter 27: Mulled Wine
Chapter 28: Potatoes
Chapter 29: Swiss Meringues
Chapter 30: Perfume
Chapter 31: Peanut Cake
Chapter 32: Glass
Chapter 33: Baby
Chapter 34: Granny
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Britt-Marie Was Here
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Acknowledgments
About the Author
1
A MAN CALLED OVE BUYS A COMPUTER THAT IS NOT A COMPUTER
Ove is fifty-nine.
He drives a Saab. He’s the kind of man who points at people he doesn’t like the look of, as if they were burglars and his forefinger a policeman’s flashlight. He stands at the counter of a shop where owners of Japanese cars come to purchase white cables. Ove eyes the sales assistant for a long time before shaking a medium-sized white box at him.
“So this is one of those O-Pads, is it?” he demands.
The assistant, a young man with a single-digit body mass index, looks ill at ease. He visibly struggles to control his urge to snatch the box out of Ove’s hands.
“Yes, exactly. An iPad. Do you think you could stop shaking it like that . . . ?”
Ove gives the box a skeptical glance, as if it’s a highly dubious sort of box, a box that rides a scooter and wears tracksuit pants and just called Ove “my friend” before offering to sell him a watch.
“I see. So it’s a computer, yes?”
The sales assistant nods. Then hesitates and quickly shakes his head.
“Yes . . . or, what I mean is, it’s an iPad. Some people call it a ‘tablet’ and others call it a ‘surfing device.’ There are different ways of looking at it. . . .”
Ove looks at the sales assistant as if he has just spoken backwards, before shaking the box again.
“But is it good, this thing?”
The assistant nods confusedly. “Yes. Or . . . How do you mean?”
Ove sighs and starts talking slowly, articulating his words as if the only problem here is his adversary’s impaired hearing.
“Is. It. Goooood? Is it a good computer?”
The assistant scratches his chin.
“I mean . . . yeah . . . it’s really good . . . but it depends what sort of computer you want.”
Ove glares at him.
“I want a computer! A normal bloody computer!”
/>
Silence descends over the two men for a short while. The assistant clears his throat.
“Well . . . it isn’t really a normal computer. Maybe you’d rather have a . . .”
The assistant stops and seems to be looking for a word that falls within the bounds of comprehension of the man facing him. Then he clears his throat again and says:
“. . . a laptop?”
Ove shakes his head wildly and leans menacingly over the counter.
“No, I don’t want a ‘laptop.’ I want a computer.”
The assistant nods pedagogically.
“A laptop is a computer.”
Ove, insulted, glares at him and stabs his forefinger at the counter.
“You think I don’t know that!”
Another silence, as if two gunmen have suddenly realized they have forgotten to bring their pistols. Ove looks at the box for a long time, as though he’s waiting for it to make a confession.
“Where does the keyboard pull out?” he mutters eventually.
The sales assistant rubs his palms against the edge of the counter and shifts his weight nervously from foot to foot, as young men employed in retail outlets often do when they begin to understand that something is going to take considerably more time than they had initially hoped.
“Well, this one doesn’t actually have a keyboard.”
Ove does something with his eyebrows. “Ah, of course,” he splutters. “Because you have to buy it as an ‘extra,’ don’t you?”
“No, what I mean is that the computer doesn’t have a separate keyboard. You control everything from the screen.”
Ove shakes his head in disbelief, as if he’s just witnessed the sales assistant walking around the counter and licking the glass-fronted display cabinet.
“But I have to have a keyboard. You do understand that?”
The young man sighs deeply, as if patiently counting to ten.
“Okay. I understand. In that case I don’t think you should go for this computer. I think you should buy something like a MacBook instead.”
“A McBook?” Ove says, far from convinced. “Is that one of those blessed ‘eReaders’ everyone’s talking about?”
“No. A MacBook is a . . . it’s a . . . laptop, with a keyboard.”
“Okay!” Ove hisses. He looks around the shop for a moment. “So are they any good, then?”
The sales assistant looks down at the counter in a way that seems to reveal a fiercely yet barely controlled desire to begin clawing his own face. Then he suddenly brightens, flashing an energetic smile.
“You know what? Let me see if my colleague has finished with his customer, so he can come and give you a demonstration.”
Ove checks his watch and grudgingly agrees, reminding the assistant that some people have better things to do than stand around all day waiting. The assistant gives him a quick nod, then disappears and comes back after a few moments with a colleague. The colleague looks very happy, as people do when they have not been working for a sufficient stretch of time as sales assistants.
“Hi, how can I help you?”
Ove drills his police-flashlight finger into the counter.
“I want a computer!”
The colleague no longer looks quite as happy. He gives the first sales assistant an insinuating glance as if to say he’ll pay him back for this.
In the meantime the first sales assistant mutters, “I can’t take anymore, I’m going for lunch.”
“Lunch,” snorts Ove. “That’s the only thing people care about nowadays.”
“I’m sorry?” says the colleague and turns around.
“Lunch!” He sneers, then tosses the box onto the counter and swiftly walks out.
2
(THREE WEEKS EARLIER)
A MAN CALLED OVE MAKES HIS NEIGHBORHOOD INSPECTION
It was five to six in the morning when Ove and the cat met for the first time. The cat instantly disliked Ove exceedingly. The feeling was very much reciprocated.
Ove had, as usual, gotten up ten minutes earlier. He could not make head nor tail of people who overslept and blamed it on “the alarm clock not ringing.” Ove had never owned an alarm clock in his entire life. He woke up at quarter to six and that was when he got up.
Every morning for the almost four decades they had lived in this house, Ove had put on the coffee percolator, using exactly the same amount of coffee as on any other morning, and then drank a cup with his wife. One measure for each cup, and one extra for the pot—no more, no less. People didn’t know how to do that anymore, brew some proper coffee. In the same way as nowadays nobody could write with a pen. Because now it was all computers and espresso machines. And where was the world going if people couldn’t even write or brew a pot of coffee?
While his proper cup of coffee was brewing, he put on his navy blue trousers and jacket, stepped into his wooden clogs, and shoved his hands in his pockets in that particular way of a middle-aged man who expects the worthless world outside to disappoint him. Then he made his morning inspection of the street. The surrounding row houses lay in silence and darkness as he walked out the door, and there wasn’t a soul in sight. Might have known, thought Ove. On this street no one took the trouble to get up any earlier than they had to. Nowadays, it was just self-employed people and other disreputable sorts living here.
The cat sat with a nonchalant expression in the middle of the footpath that ran between the houses. It had half a tail and only one ear. Patches of fur were missing here and there as if someone had pulled it out in handfuls. Not a very impressive feline.
Ove stomped forward. The cat stood up. Ove stopped. They stood there measuring each other up for a few moments, like two potential troublemakers in a small-town bar. Ove considered throwing one of his clogs at it. The cat looked as if it regretted not bringing its own clogs to lob back.
“Scram!” Ove bellowed, so abruptly that the cat jumped back. It briefly scrutinized the fifty-nine-year-old man and his clogs, then turned and lolloped off. Ove could have sworn it rolled its eyes before clearing out.
Pest, he thought, glancing at his watch. Two minutes to six. Time to get going or the bloody cat would have succeeded in delaying the entire inspection. Fine state of affairs that would be.
He began marching along the footpath between the houses. He stopped by the traffic sign informing motorists that they were prohibited from entering the residential area. He gave the metal pole a firm kick. Not that it was wonky or anything, but it’s always best to check. Ove is the sort of man who checks the status of all things by giving them a good kick.
He walked across the parking area and strolled back and forth along all the garages to make sure none of them had been burgled in the night or set on fire by gangs of vandals. Such things had never happened around here, but then Ove had never skipped one of his inspections either. He tugged three times at the door handle of his own garage, where his Saab was parked. Just like any other morning.
After this, he detoured through the guest parking area, where cars could only be left for up to twenty-four hours. Carefully he noted down all the license numbers in the little pad he kept in his jacket pocket, and then compared these to the licenses he had noted down the day before. On occasions when the same license numbers turned up in Ove’s notepad, Ove would go home and call the Vehicle Licensing Authority to retrieve the vehicle owner’s details, after which he’d call up the latter and inform him that he was a useless bloody imbecile who couldn’t even read signs. Ove didn’t really care who was parked in the guest parking area, of course. But it was a question of principle. If it said twenty-four hours on the sign, that’s how long you were allowed to stay. What would it be like if everyone just parked wherever they liked? It would be chaos. There’d be cars bloody everywhere.
Today, thank goodness, there weren’t any unauthorized cars in the guest parking, and Ove was able to proceed to the next part of his daily inspection: the trash room. Not that it was really his responsibility, mind. He had steadfastly opp
osed from the very beginning the nonsense steamrollered through by the recently arrived jeep-brigade that household trash “had to be separated.” Having said that, once the decision was made to sort the trash, someone had to ensure that it was actually being done. Not that anyone had asked Ove to do it, but if men like Ove didn’t take the initiative there’d be anarchy. There’d be bags of trash all over the place.
He kicked the bins a bit, swore, and fished out a jar from the glass recycling, mumbled something about “incompetents” as he unscrewed its metal lid. He dropped the jar back into glass recycling, and the metal lid into the metal recycling bin.
Back when Ove was the chairman of the Residents’ Association, he’d pushed hard to have surveillance cameras installed so they could monitor the trash room and stop people tossing out unauthorized trash. To Ove’s great annoyance, his proposal was voted out. The neighbors felt “slightly uneasy” about it; plus they felt it would be a headache archiving all the videotapes. This, in spite of Ove repeatedly arguing that those with “honest intentions” had nothing to fear from “the truth.”
Two years later, after Ove had been deposed as chairman of the Association (a betrayal Ove subsequently referred to as “the coup d’état”), the question came up again. The new steering group explained snappily to the residents that there was a newfangled camera available, activated by movement sensors, which sent the footage directly to the Internet. With the help of such a camera one could monitor not only the trash room but also the parking area, thereby preventing vandalism and burglaries. Even better, the video material erased itself automatically after twenty-four hours, thus avoiding any “breaches of the residents’ right to privacy.” A unanimous decision was required to go ahead with the installation. Only one member voted against.
And that was because Ove did not trust the Internet. He accentuated the net even though his wife nagged that you had to put the emphasis on Inter. The steering group realized soon enough that the Internet would watch Ove throwing out his trash over Ove’s own dead body. And in the end no cameras were installed. Just as well, Ove reasoned. The daily inspection was more effective anyway. You knew who was doing what and who was keeping things under control. Anyone with half a brain could see the sense of it.
When he’d finished his inspection of the trash room he locked the door, just as he did every morning, and gave it three good tugs to ensure it was closed properly. Then he turned around and noticed a bicycle leaning up against the wall outside the bike shed. Even though there was a huge sign instructing residents not to leave their bicycles there. Right next to it one of the neighbors had taped up an angry, handwritten note: “This is not a bicycle parking area! Learn to read signs!” Ove muttered something about ineffectual idiots, opened the bike shed, picked up the bicycle, put it neatly inside, then locked the shed and tugged the door handle three times.
The Fredrik Backman Collection: A Man Called Ove, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry, and Britt-Marie Was Here Page 1
