Book review: ‘My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry’ by Fredrik Backman

By LARRY BALLWAHN | Wilton

Elsa is a precocious “almost eight”-year-old. She lives most of the time with Mum and George but spends some time with Dad and Lisette. Mum and George are going to have a baby, “Halfie.” Lisette has two young children that she brought into that marriage. Elsa has concerns about her status when Halfie is born, but not too many, because she spends most of her time with Granny, Mum’s mother, who lives in the same apartment building that Mum and George do. 

Seventy-seven-year-old granny is somewhat of a rebel. She was a surgeon until she was considered too old. She said it was because they went politically correct and didn’t want her smoking in the operating room. She had been somewhat of an absentee mother, as it was her habit to go off to anywhere there was an emergency need. Also, she had collected an assortment of the neediest and housed them in the same apartment building as her family.

Since Elsa looked up everything she didn’t understand on Wikipedia, and often corrected both her peers and adults, she was not well liked. In fact, she considered Granny her only friend. Knowing she was dying, Granny gave Elsa an assignment. She was to take letters to an assortment of people. Elsa thought she knew most of the people, and some she didn’t like much. 

Elsa soon learned several things. The letters were apologies for something that Granny had done. Secondly, an assortment of people and animals had been tasked with protecting her and the apartment house. She wasn’t sure what they were being protected from. She did realize that she had been chased by a strange man on more than one occasion. Finally, the tales that Granny told were usually based on the people to whom she sent letters, and the tales usually described lessons learned.

On most days, Elsa didn’t mind that she was different. Granny had much to do with that, as she had introduced Elsa to the Land-of-Almost-Awake, where everyone was different. And besides that, Granny lived being different and often included Elsa. With Granny gone, the world was different; she and Granny had even had a secret language.

As she distributed the letters, she developed a new understanding of the people. There was a reason that Britt-Marie did the things she did. The woman in the black skirt had problems that went beyond the wine she tried to hide. And Granny had been a different person before Elsa was born.

There is much about Elsa that doesn’t come out in this review, especially what she considers “quality literature” and what she thinks of those who fail to read it. You should also discover what happens when Halfie is born.

Fredrik Backman is a Swedish author. He is a #1 New York Times Bestseller.

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