Review: My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry by Fredrik Backman

☆☆➹⁀☆ 4 stars☆➹⁀☆☆ 

 

What it’s about:

Elsa is seven years old and different. Her grandmother is seventy-seven years old and crazy, standing-on-the-balcony-firing-paintball-guns-at-men-who-want-to-talk-about-Jesus-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 letters lead her to an apartment building full of drunks, monsters, attack dogs, and totally ordinary old crones, but also to the truth about fairytales and kingdoms and a grandmother like no other.

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My Thoughts:

 

My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry by Fredrik Backman is a heartwarming tale of the relationship between a struggling seven-year-old and her cranky grandmother.

The precious protagonist, Elsa, is sometimes insightful and at other times socially obtuse. Her social awkwardness makes her a victim to school bullies. Between her parents divorce and her peculiarities she is shy and quiet. Her grandmother recognizes Elsa’s uniqueness and creates fairy tales from the “Land of Almost Asleep” to impart memorable messages that will guide Elsa in her grandmother’s inevitable absence.

Upon her grandmother’s passing, Elsa embarks on a quest to tell friends and neighbors that her grandmother apologies for a slight or misunderstanding. In doing so, grandmother teaches Elsa whom she can rely upon as well as showing her that everyone has some difficulty or loss that impacts their life. In addition, Elsa and the reader learn that grandmother was truly a good friend/neighbor and Samaritan.

I loved this charming, heartwarming tale. I adored grandmother’s fairy tales as a creative way to impart brilliant nuggets to Elsa. The characters are memorable and endearing. Grandmother is quite eccentric in many ways, but at her core, she is a loving, matriarch who brilliantly taught her granddaughter about family history, acceptance and forgiveness. My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry is a fabulous, must-read story.

The audiobook is wonderfully narrated by Joan Walker

 

 

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