My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry
A charming, warmhearted novel from the author of the New York Times bestseller A Man Called Ove. Elsa is seven years old and different. Her grandmother is seventy-seven years old and crazy--as in standing-on-the-balcony-firing-paintball-guns-at-strangers crazy. She is also Elsa's best, and only, friend. At night Elsa takes refuge in her grandmother's stories, in the Land-of-Almost-Awake and the Kingdom of Miamas, where everybody is different and nobody needs to be normal. When Elsa's grandmother dies and leaves behind a series of letters apologizing to people she has wronged, Elsa's greatest adventure begins. Her grandmother's instructions lead her to an apartment building full of drunks, monsters, attack dogs, and old crones but also to the truth about fairy tales and kingdoms and a grandmother like no other. My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry is told with the same comic accuracy and beating heart as Fredrik Backman's bestselling debut novel, A Man Called Ove. It is a story about life and death and one of the most important human rights: the right to be different.
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Community Reviews
There were parts of this novel that were brilliant. Overall I really liked the main character, Elsa and how the delivering of the letters unfolded a story about the various neighbors. However the whole fantasy part of the novel really bogged me down and took away from the novel. A Man Called Ove was definitely a better read. I was intrigued by Britt Marie as a character so I will try his next one.
I enjoyed it like a cup of tea - I read it casually, and felt like even though I liked it, I ought to like it better than I did. This was good, and I was glad I took the time to enjoy it, but certainly not something I would savor like a glass of wine or gulp down like a cold pop on a hot day. I ignored the parts of the book that bugged me.
Cute book, heart warming. I'm still not crazy about his writing style. But my mom keeps wanting to read these books so I do too. I liked how the book was from Elsa's point of view.
An endearing and heartwarming read. My granny was quite the character as well so, I thoroughly enjoyed reading of Granny & Elsa’s adventures/shenanigans. The middle was very slow and caused me to put it down for several weeks. Also, it loses 2 points and a star for the wurse (dog) dying. If I have a daughter one day, I hope she is different like Elsa.
In general I found it just a light read, with all the advantages and disadvantages that entails. It had some funny moments, and the characters were reasonably interesting. But I didn’t find myself getting very attached to any of them or their fates. The throughline of the fairy tale added some color, but in a way kind of prevented the book from being very thought-provoking. Things were always ratified in a way that just seemed to be bound up with Elsa & her grandmother’s ongoing story, more than with the world we actually live in. Surely we’re supposed to take that tale as an allegory for the Real World, but for me it didn’t really ring true that way. Still, I got pretty much what I expected; it was a quick, fun read.
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