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.