Ove storms out of an electronics store in frustration after failing to find a computer that meets his standards.

Ove cancels his telephone service and newspaper subscription, quietly preparing for his suicide as part of his morning routine.

Patrick and Parvaneh's moving trailer scrapes the side of Ove's house, sparking a furious confrontation with his new neighbors.

Ove visits a gravestone with flowers and reveals that his wife Sonja died six months earlier.

Ove prepares a noose in his living room, puts on a suit, and writes final instructions, but new neighbors arrive with cookies.

The rope Ove used for the noose snaps, and he reflects on his old friendship with Rune before going to bleed the radiators.

Ove's carbon monoxide attempt in his Saab is interrupted when he opens the garage door and accidentally gives Parvaneh a bloody nose.

Ove drives the pregnant Parvaneh and her daughters to the hospital after Patrick falls off a ladder and is taken by ambulance.

Ove jumps onto train tracks to rescue a man having a seizure, then faces an oncoming train before leaping clear at the last second.

Ove discovers a cat-shaped hole in a snowdrift, pulls the frozen cat out, and takes it inside his home despite his protests.

Parvaneh asks Ove to teach her to drive, giving him yet another task that keeps postponing his plans to end his life.

The entire neighborhood rallies at Rune and Anita's home as Lena exposes the councilman's secrets, forcing him to back down and leave.

Ove repaints a crib from his own past and gives it to Parvaneh as a gift for her unborn baby.

Ove chases burglars through the neighborhood, suffers a heart attack, and is found collapsed on the ground by Parvaneh.

Ove is found dead in his sleep by Parvaneh, and 300 people attend his funeral despite his wishes for no ceremony.

The novel opens with 59-year-old Ove, a gruff and routine-bound widower who has decided to end his life after losing both his wife and his job. Every time Ove prepares to carry out a suicide attempt, his new neighbors and their chaotic lives break in and derail his plans. Through small acts of reluctant help — driving a pregnant neighbor to the hospital, rescuing a frozen cat, and teaching someone to drive — Ove finds himself entangled with the people around him. The central conflict escalates when government officials threaten to remove Ove's ailing neighbor Rune from his home, and the entire neighborhood unites to fight back. By the story's end, Ove has transformed from an isolated man determined to die into the unlikely heart of a community, and he is mourned by 300 people at his funeral.

Ove's failed suicide attempts and the community that pulls him back to life.

Young Ove helps his father recover a wallet from a thug named Tom, learning his father's code of honesty firsthand.

Ove's father dies in a railway accident, and Ove takes a job at the same railways to carry on his father's legacy.

Tom frames Ove for stealing money at the railway; Ove refuses to inform on Tom and is reassigned as a night train cleaner.

Ove's renovated family home burns down in a neighboring house fire and government officials force him to sell the ruined property.

Ove punches Tom in a boarding house to reclaim his father's stolen watch after reaching his absolute breaking point.

Sonja takes the initiative and invites Ove to dinner; he arrives wearing his father's old suit and confesses he is a train cleaner.

Sonja enrolls Ove in a distance-learning engineering course that leads directly to the housing office career he will later lose.

Sonja reveals she is pregnant after she and Ove bury her beloved cat Ernest beside her late father's lake.

Ove takes the stray cat to the florist and then to Sonja's gravestone, formally introducing it to her out loud.

Ove accidentally locks journalist Lena inside his own garage, and Parvaneh brokers a deal to remove her in exchange for a hospital ride.

Rune answers his front door and recognizes Ove by name despite his advancing Alzheimer's disease.

Adrian, now working as a mailman, reveals that Sonja was his favorite teacher, and the two men share a silent moment of grief.

Adrian brings the homeless Mirsad to Ove's door and Ove reluctantly agrees to let him stay, saying Sonja would have wanted it.

Ove visits Amel's café and accepts the long-standing offer of a whiskey, leading to a quiet conversation about Mirsad's future.

Parvaneh goes into labor at the close of Ove's hospital stay and gives birth to a healthy baby boy.

This pool traces the significant events from Ove's past and present that fill in the portrait of the man he became. Beginning with the lessons in honesty Ove learned from his father and the series of losses that followed, the pool charts how Ove arrived at his isolated and embittered present. Key secondary plot threads emerge through characters like Tom, whose betrayals redirected the course of Ove's life, and Sonja, whose death left a quiet void in every corner of his home and routine. In the present day, neighbors like Adrian, Mirsad, and Parvaneh each intersect with Ove's grief in meaningful but understated ways. By the pool's end, Ove's world has quietly expanded — a new baby has arrived next door, and the community he once resented has become the one he belongs to.

The backstory moments and secondary threads that quietly shape Ove's world.

Ove's father fixes a railway director's broken car and is later given the family's first Saab, beginning a lifelong bond.

Ove is rejected from military service due to a congenital heart condition, leaving him more despondent than at any point since his father's death.

Ove sees Sonja for the first time on a night train and laughs aloud for the first time since his father died.

Parvaneh discovers Sonja's wheelchair-adapted kitchen and the tire tracks throughout the house; Ove does not push away her hand of sympathy.

Ove and Sonja honeymoon in Spain, where Ove secretly repairs a fence, hauls a horse from mud, and builds a church wall.

A drunk bus driver crashes the coach home from Spain, and Sonja loses their unborn baby and is left permanently in a wheelchair.

A government official suggests Sonja should move to a care home; Ove throws her shoe at the woman, and Sonja laughs for the first time.

Sitting alone in his running Saab, Ove sees Nasanin's drawing of him as the only colorful figure and turns off the engine.

Ove delivers a fierce pep talk to a tearful Parvaneh at a red light and physically removes an aggressive driver from his car.

Standing at Sonja's grave, Ove reveals she died of cancer and tells her he is truly going to end his life this time.

Ove blocks the councilman's Škoda with a borrowed trailer, then goes inside alone and cries when he realizes it changes nothing.

Jimmy reveals the government plans to move Rune imminently, and Ove immediately goes to Anita's door to collect the legal papers.

Anders secretly uses his towing company to remove the council's Škoda from the neighborhood, escalating the war with the bureaucrats.

Parvaneh's daughter calls Ove 'Granddad' at her birthday party, and he stands speechless in the hallway unable to respond.

A doctor reveals Ove's heart is too large to function safely; Parvaneh bursts out laughing and declares him utterly rubbish at dying.

This pool follows the key revelations and turning points that explain Ove's transformation from a suicidal loner into a community hero. It begins in the past with the quiet origins of his lifelong values — his father's Saab, a military rejection, and the first sight of Sonja — before arriving at the devastating accident in Spain that robbed Ove of his child and left Sonja in a wheelchair. In the present, a series of emotional confrontations strip away Ove's defenses: Parvaneh uncovers the truth of Sonja's disability, a child's drawing shows Ove as the only figure drawn in color, and Ove weeps alone after realizing his fight against bureaucracy may be unwinnable. Each moment chips away at his resolve to die, replacing it with reluctant but undeniable connection. By the end, a doctor's blunt diagnosis and a little girl's instinctive use of the word 'Granddad' confirm that Ove has, against all his intentions, found a reason to keep living.