A Man Called Ove: Chapter 20 Summary & Analysis

Ove stays in the parked Saab for nearly twenty minutes. The cat gets agitated and then falls asleep. Ove looks over the parking area and thinks about his friendship with Rune. Rune and Anita had moved in the same day that Ove and Sonja did, and Sonja and Anita became best friends immediately. Anita was also pregnant, and the women felt their husbands should be friends. Ove resisted because Rune drove a Volvo, but soon they lent each other tools and talked about lawnmowers. When more people started moving to the area, Ove and Rune established the Residents' Association and the rules for the neighborhood.

Ove and Rune talked about their wives' raging pregnancy hormones. Anita kept putting the coffee pot in the fridge, while Sonja developed a short temper and was alternately sweating and freezing. Rune told Ove one day that he found Anita crying because she heard a nice song on the radio.

Sonja played music for her belly to make the child move, and Ove worried that he wasn't going to be a good father. Sonja suggested Ove talk to Rune about it and laughed when Ove asked for an instruction manual. Ove and Rune ended up standing around in Ove's shed while their wives talked in the kitchen. After three nights of this, they began building blue cribs and then put them in their nurseries. Sonja cried when she saw hers and told Ove she wanted to get married. They got married at the town hall with Rune and Anita and went out for dinner after. Ove and Rune argued with the waiter about the bill for an hour while their wives took a taxi home.

Back in the present day, Ove finally wakes the cat up and gets out of the Saab. He hears an unfamiliar female voice calling his name in a friendly way. The woman stumbles into the garage and Ove tells her he doesn't want anything. She introduces herself as Lena from the local newspaper, and explains that she's a journalist, as Ove continues to insist he doesn't want a subscription. She tells him that she wants to interview him since he saved a man at the train station yesterday.

Lena loses Ove's attention as he races past her towards the Škoda that's driving in the residential area. Ove bangs on the window and startles the woman in the passenger seat, but the man in the white shirt rolls down his window and seems unconcerned. The man tells Ove that he has permission to drive in the residential area, and lights a cigarette. As Ove curses and keeps pressing the issue, the man in the white shirt explains that they're there to take Rune into care. When Ove reminds the man that Anita doesn't want that, the man tells Ove that Anita doesn't get to decide.

Ove tells the man in the white shirt again that he can't drive in the residential area. The man asks Ove what he's going to do about it, and Ove is shocked to hear the man address him by name. The man drives away and Lena comes up behind Ove. Ove asks her how she knows his name and asks Lena how the white-shirt man knows his name. Lena admits that she found Ove's receipt for his train ticket at the station, but doesn't know how the man knows Ove’s name.

Ove walks towards his house with the cat, goes inside, and sits on his stool. He's shaking with humiliation and he remembers that you can't fight men in white shirts. The white shirts haven't been in the neighborhood since he and Sonja returned from Spain after the accident.