A Man Called Ove: A Novel

“You’re just trying to fob me off with a load of CRAP, that’s what you’re doing!” Ove yells back at him without letting him get to a full stop, and menacing him with something he spontaneously snatches off the nearest shelf.

Ove doesn’t quite know what it is, but it looks like a white electrical plug of some sort and it feels like the sort of thing he could throw very hard at the sales assistant if the need arises. The sales assistant looks at Jimmy with a sort of twitching around his eyes that Ove seems adept at generating in people with whom he comes into contact. This is so frequent that one could possibly name a syndrome after him.

“He didn’t mean any harm, man,” Jimmy tries to say pleasantly.

“I’m trying to show him a MacBook and he’s asking me what sort of car I drive,” the sales assistant bursts out, looking genuinely hurt.

“It’s a relevant question,” mutters Ove, with a firm nod at Jimmy.

“I don’t have a car! Because I think it’s unnecessary and I want to use more environmentally friendly modes of transportation!” says the sales assistant in a tone of voice pitched somewhere between intransigent anger and the fetal position.

Ove looks at Jimmy and throws out his arms, as if this should explain everything.

“You can’t reason with a person like that.” He nods and evidently expects immediate support. “Where the hell have you been, anyway?”

“I was just checking out the monitors over there, you know,” explains Jimmy.

“Are you buying a monitor?” asks Ove.

“No,” says Jimmy and looks at Ove as if it was a really strange question, more or less in the way that Sonja used to ask, “What’s that got to do with it?” when Ove asked her if she really “needed” another pair of shoes.

The sales assistant tries to turn around and steal away, but Ove quickly puts his leg forward to stop him.

“Where are you going? We’re not done here.”

The sales assistant looks deeply unhappy now. Jimmy pats him on the back, to encourage him.

“Ove here just wants to check out an iPad—can you sort us out?”

The sales assistant gives Ove a grim look.

Okay, but as I was trying to ask him earlier, what model do you want? The 16-, 32-, or 64-gigabyte?”

Ove looks at the sales assistant as if he feels the latter should stop regurgitating random combinations of letters.

“There are different versions with different amounts of memory,” Jimmy translates for Ove as if he were an interpreter for the Department of Immigration.

“And I suppose they want a hell of a lot of extra money for it,” Ove snorts back.

Jimmy nods his understanding of the situation and turns to the sales assistant.

“I think Ove wants to know a little more about the differences between the various models.”

The sales assistant groans.

“Well, do you want the normal or the 3G model, then?”

Jimmy turns to Ove.

“Will it be used mainly at home or will she use it outdoors as well?”

Ove pokes his flashlight finger into the air and points it dead straight at the sales assistant.

“Hey! I want her to have the BEST ONE! Understood?”

The sales assistant takes a nervous step back. Jimmy grins and opens his massive arms as if preparing himself for a big hug.

“Let’s say 3G, 128-gig, all the bells and whistles you’ve got. And can you throw in a cable?”

A few minutes later Ove snatches the plastic bag with the iPad box from the counter, mumbling something about “eightthousandtwohundredandninetyfivekronor and they don’t even throw in a keyboard!” followed by “thieves,” “bandits,” and various obscenities.

And so it turns out that the seven-year-old gets an iPad that evening from Ove. And a lead from Jimmy.

She stands in the hall just inside the door, not quite sure what to do with that information, and in the end she just nods and says, “Really nice . . . thanks.” Jimmy nods expansively.

“You got any snacks?”

She points to the living room, which is full of people. In the middle of the room is a birthday cake with eight lit candles, towards which the well-built young man immediately navigates. The girl, who is now an eight-year-old, stays in the hall, touching the iPad box with amazement. As if she hardly dares believe that she’s actually got it in her hands. Ove leans towards her.

“That’s how I always felt every time I bought a new car,” he says in a low voice.

She looks around to make sure no one can see; then she smiles and gives him a hug.

“Thanks, Granddad,” she whispers and runs into her room.

Ove stands quietly in the hall, poking his house keys against the calluses on one of his palms. Patrick comes limping along on his crutches in pursuit of the eight-year-old. Apparently he’s been given the evening’s most thankless task: that of convincing his daughter that it’s more fun sitting there in a dress, eating cake with a lot of boring grown-ups, than staying in her room listening to pop music and downloading apps onto her new iPad. Ove stays in the hall with his jacket on and stares emptily at the floor for what must be almost ten minutes.

“Are you okay?”