My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry
A Novel
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4.4 • 1K Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Precocious Elsa, a sharp-witted seven-year-old, has only one friend, her protective, eccentric Granny, who tells her nightly bedtime fairy tales in their small apartment in the Land of Almost-Awake. But when cancer takes Granny away, Elsa is tasked with delivering her grandmother's final letters of apology to the other residents of the building The Monster, a hulking, quiet germaphobe; Alf, a tough-talking, curmudgeonly cabbie; Britt-Marie, the nervous wife of a businessman; and others whom she feels she mistreated during her life. Elsa proceeds through her quest, yet as she gets to know her neighbors, she discovers they all share traits and histories with characters from Granny's fairy tales. As her two worlds collide, Elsa, along with her new compatriots (including a giant dog known as a wurse), soon realize their home is actually the Land of Almost-Awake's castle, and that it needs protection from a dragon who is poised to strike. In his second offering, Backman (A Man Called Ove) continues to write with the same whimsical charm and warm heart as in his debut. Though it's certainly entertaining, Elsa's narrative with several subplots to juggle and an overabundance of quirkiness doesn't succeed quite as well as Backman's previous work. Still, fans of the author will find more to like here.
Customer Reviews
4
I enjoyed everything about this book. Truly a masterpiece.
Pretty good
Not Blackman’s best, but intriguing nonetheless.
My grandmother said to tell you she was sorry
Confusing book hard to understand