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 … 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.more
This book absolutely destroyed me. I was crying by the second chapter, but in a good way! I can’t put my finger on what resonated so strongly with me in this novel. The characters were so quirky and amazing. Elsa is my superhero. Maybe that was it. The bullied, weird child that had such a rich imaginary life. The girl with the super glue bond with her grandmother. The daughter that didn’t want to burden her parents with her miserable existence at school. I’m sure there are whole legion of people out there who can relate.
I loved how the grandmother’s stories, so unbelievable in the beginning, contained so much truth when Elsa started digging into the letters left to her. The tenants in the building first seemed too unreal, too based on fairy-tale. Backman did an excellent job teasing out the backstories and tragedies that led them all to be under that roof. I have recommended this book to all my reader friends, telling them to put it at the top of their pile. There is no greater praise in mind!
Holy. Cow. This book, ya’ll. I cannot wait to grab another book by Backman. Every character is marvelous and ties together beautifully. Elsa is a not your average 7 year old (it is never mentioned in the book, but in my opinion it seems as though she has Aspergers) incredibly intelligent and best friends with her grandmother, who freaking rocks. Grandma is feisty as hell and crazy amazing, and her love for Elsa makes you want to squeeze her in the biggest hug ever. Elsa is sent after grandma’s death to deliver letters to everyone in the building who has wronged. (once again, grandma was unapologetically feisty) and Elsa learns so much about her that hadn’t known while she was alive. The whole book has references to the fairy tales her grandmother made up for her during Elsa’s hard times that ingeniously tell about the other tennants in building. After I was done I literally sat back and absorbed what I read. So happy to end the year with it.
There were moments while reading this book where I wanted to quit. One page gave me a light hearted, magical tale and the next ripped my guts out or made me want to fling the whole thing across the room in disgust. But I couldn’t stop. I had to know what happened next because it turns out I cared about those characters. The lines between reality and fantasy blurred often. It wasn’t until I was finished that I realized how much I liked this book. I compare it to Gone with the Wind in that I thought I hated that story, yet I trudged through its gazillion pages to the end. Scarlett infuriated me just as many of the characters in My Grandmother yanked on all of my emotions. If a book can make me feel that much and I’m dying to talk to someone about it when I’m done that means it was pretty darn good.
I saw this book at Costco and realized it was by the author of “A Man Called Ove”, so I eagerly decided to buy it and read. Glad I did! While this was a very unique story, the author’s talent for bringing characters to life and making them so real shone through. It’s the story of a 7year old girl whose only friend is her crazy grandmother. Granny creates a magical fairytale world filled with stories where the two of them escape reality. Through a series of letters she must deliver after her grandmother’s death, Elsa learns that her grandmother’s stories are really fantastical versions of true stories about the people around her. This is a story about acceptance, community, friendship, kindness, sacrifice, family, but most of all love. The author crafts an intricate story that weaves in and out of reality and shows how each person’s story is vital to the main plot line – quite the metaphor for life! After reading and loving two books by Fredrick Backman, I definitely have a new favorite author! This is a book worth reading.
I borrowed it from the library, but it was one of those books you just know you will want to read again, so I bought it on Kindle. A great read!
I finished this book with great sorrow. The book tells with high sensitivity about what it is like to be an exceptional child, and how she sees the world. I loved the excellent relationship she had with her grandmother, who invented magical kingdoms that would become her granddaughter as a refuge and tried to help her cope with the painful reality of life.
I also loved the process the girl and all her surroundings did following the grandmother’s intervention and of course the letters. It was fascinating to understand how all the actions connect and how little attention can make all the difference.
This book breaks conventions of what it means to be a grandmother, what it means to be a mother or to be an abnormal child, and what is the connection between these and a dog. The book seeks to sharpen the humanity that exists in all of us. I think that people are gnawing at us with this fear that will be hurting our children at school, and reading about this coping is very interesting and enriching. Children can be evil and take care of someone just because he is different, or in the definition of the heroine of the book: “Because I had a Gryffindor scarf.” After all, there is no logical reason for the children’s wickedness.
In short, I liked the book, it’s funny and cute and even brought me to tears. Beckman knows how to create unique characters with a unique writing style.
It was a bit weird in the beginning but I loved the characters and the way they were developed. It’s a great story about love and loss, family dynamics, and learning that people may not be who you think they are in many ways. Gread read.
I’ve heard some great things about Fredrik Backman recently, and I finally gave his writing a try with this one.
The writing is captivating; the stories are poetic; the characters are unforgettable. Elsa is a relatable little girl who relies on her Granny because she’s not very good at making friends – at least in the real world. However, both Granny and Elsa are amazing at delving into fictional worlds – from Elsa’s understandable obsession with Harry Potter and Gryffindor to adventures in their made-up world of Miamas.
When Granny dies, Elsa is left with a mission to right the wrongs Granny made. Along the way, Elsa meets the people who shaped Granny’s life and who will continue to shape Elsa’s. From Wolfheart and Alf to Britt-Marie and the wurse, the people in Elsa’s apartment building turn out to be so much more interesting – and lovable – than she ever imagined.
I highly recommend this one, and I already bought a copy of A Man Called Ove to experience more of Backman’s magic.
Such a wonderful, magical story of love, pain, hope, and redemption unfolding in the eyes of a seven-year-old-almost-eight girl whose grandmother’s letters send her on a treasure hunt for answers.
The audiobook was excellent, and the story embraced and held me through every discovery.
I am usually good at knowing my ability to read a book in a genre other than ones I normally read. I’m not much of a fantasy or science-fiction guy. I loved Harry Potter, The Time Machine, Lord of the Rings, and Thursday Next, but when there’s a lot of room for wiggle in the structure, I’m less inclined to like it. It could be an amazing book, but it just doesn’t work for me as I question the boundaries and the influx of species I don’t understand. I never expected to find that in a Fredrik Backman novel… I read four of his others and just went on a splurge to order copies of everything he’d written. When I perused the description for My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry, I went “uh oh” but continued on. About ten percent in, I knew I was going to struggle.
It’s not a fantasy book, but at least 50% of the story is based on metaphors and allegories where Backman tells us about the relationships of a kooky cast of characters who share residence in a large building full of apartments. Elsa is the 7-turning-8-year-old main character who’s been given a series of notes from her recently deceased and supposedly crazy grandmother. Through Elsa’s eyes, and her grandmother’s imagination, we learn some history and some current happenings that tie everything together. Her grandmother created a fantasy world of people and places to help teach Elsa a different way of looking at the world both near and afar.
In many aspects, the story is hilarious and adorable. When it sticks to real-life situations, I laugh and cry. When it tries to show the theory of how people relate to one another thru made-up places and monsters, I’m lost. It’s a bit of an immediate thing…. I hear/see the words about another creature or planet, and something sinks inside me. In movies, I love it. But in books, I usually do not. I also struggled at times because of the simplicity in some of the writing. While Elsa’s vocabulary is quite skillful, and her ways of dealing with people are more mature than most adults I know, the short and terse structure at times overwhelmed the plot for me.
So… my lesson is to be careful when going on a binge to read all the works from an author you love. While this hasn’t caused me to drop my opinion of Backman, it made me realize a story needs to work on all levels and elements to truly move or impact me. In this one, the fantasy took me out of the normal love I have for Backman’s style and character development to the point I found myself skimming way too often. I committed to reading it, and I did, but I probably only digested about 2/3 of the content because it just wasn’t keeping my attention.
I’m still gonna read more of his work and recommend him to others. Just not this book unless the reader is unlike me and loves the fantasy components. Given the good parts were a 5 for me, and the bad parts were a 1 for me, I settled on allotting 3 stars which in my world is still a good book. I recognize the skill and talent enough to say it’s a solid read with a select audience. Kudos to anyone who loved it, I wish I could be more open-minded in some of the genres I don’t often find interesting. Maybe one day!
This book was so fantastic that you never want it to end. I feel in love with the relationships developed and the rawness of the characters. It’s a fun book and one that makes reading worthwhile.
This was a really nice book. I love all the characters especially Elsa and Granny. The author makes you want to actually know these people in real life. Excellently written, great flow and keeps you interested.
A hilarious, whimsical and touching novel about a young girl who loses her grandmother and embarks on a last adventure for her: to pass on her grandmother’s reparations. The girl learns about unknown relationships to her grandmother on this last quest.
A fun book told from the POV of an almost eight-year-old. How her grandmother taught her lessons and told her grandmother’s and mother’s history using the telling of fairytales. Imaginative and refreshingly informative and amusing.
As much as “Time at the Top,” “Black and Blue Magic,” and “A Wrinkle in Time” resonate with every child’s heart, MY GRANDMOTHER ASKED ME TO TELL YOU SHE’S SORRY is delivered with bullseye precision to adults, hearkening us back to tucked-in bedtime stories with seamless ease. I laughed until I cried. And I cried… simply because some things in life are heartbreakingly sad, even in fairytales. Fredrik Backman’s extraordinary tale isn’t merely a five-star read, it’s an experience that will help you to grow into the heart that resides inside each of us no matter how old we are—the heart of a child.
I liked this book, but the main character was a bit obnoxious at times, and sometimes the book felt a little cutesy at times. I also wasn’t the biggest fan of the made-up kingdom. It was a little hit-or-miss for me. Overall, I found it enjoyable.
A delight in every way. I appreciated that it was different and loved it because it was excellent. Was surprised to feel teary over a late sentence that began, “The Christmas holidays come to an end,” which has nothing much to do with the overall plot and everything to do with our awful year.
I could not get into this book – even after reading 200 pages. I finally read the last chapter to try and find a point – guess I missed it! The story was about a seven year old little girl that talked, thought and acted too much like an adult – yet kept a toe hold in the land of Make Believe with her Granny. It was too Harry Potter-ish for me.
Very hard to read and get into.
If you are a fan of Harry Potter, no matter what your age or gender you will want to read this book. It is sad and happy story!! It made me cry and it made me laugh. The treasure hunt set up by the grandmother for her nearly eight year old precocious granddaughter is a grand trip. The ending will surprise you as will many parts of the book. Enjoy!!