My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

by Fredrik Backman

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. 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.

• ISBN10: 1501115073
• ISBN13: 9781501115073
• Publish Date: 5 April 2016 (first published 16 June 2015)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Simon & Schuster
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 400
• Language: English

Reviews

[laughingrachel]

4.5 stars.

Definitely cried. Definitely worth it.

The story within a story can get a little hard to follow sometimes, but honestly just power through. It all falls together without you needing to keep it straight.

[Bianca]

People in the real world always say, when something terrible happens, that the sadness and loss and aching pain of the heart will “lessen as time passes,” but it isn’t true. Sorrow and loss are constant, but if we all had to go through our whole lives carrying them the whole time, we wouldn’t be able to stand it. The sadness would paralyze us. So in the end we just pack it into bags and find somewhere to leave it.

— While I liked the central story, I wasn’t really fond of the way it was executed, what with the fairy tale story mirroring the real events in the book and all. I just couldn’t get into it.

[violetpeanut]

Originally posted on


7-year-old Elsa is the narrator and main character of My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She’s Sorry. She’s a very precocious little girl who is wise beyond her years. She lives with her parents in an apartment in a larger house filled with a diverse cast of characters. She has a very special relationship with her grandmother who tells her stories of the Land of Almost Awake. Together, they’ve created a fantasy world where Elsa feels safe and brave. Her grandmother is larger-than-life and is always getting into trouble – most of the time to make Elsa feel better. Elsa is a very different little girl and is bullied regularly. Granny creates distractions and allows Elsa to call the shots sometimes to make her feel a little more in control.

Granny, just say sorry for throwing turds at the police, and we can go home

Granny dies and leaves Elsa feeling somewhat alone and scared. She broke my heart at the beginning of the novel. Anticipating this, Granny creates a great quest that Elsa must complete. She has to find and then deliver letters to the other residents of the house. Along her journey she meets and befriends the other residents, sometimes whether they like it or not, and overcomes many of her fears.

This book is so beautifully written. I cannot gush enough about that. The author perfectly captured Elsa’s perspective as a 7 (almost-8) year old little girl who is too smart for her own good, yet still innocent. There are some really poignant moments where we see how Elsa’s fantasy world and her real-life experiences are juxtaposed. She’s so smart and wise for a little girl and learns a bit about life through her journey, yet she never loses her belief in her imaginary world. In fact, it only becomes stronger.

The other characters in the book are interesting and diverse. There’s a grump and a busybody, and a scary man and a lonely woman and others. Through delivering Granny’s letters, Elsa builds relationships with them and learns how they came to be where they are and how Granny has affected everyone’s lives. Elsa, in turn, helps to heal these people just by being herself. She starts to realize that being different isn’t so bad. By the end of the book, Elsa has gained a whole new family – as Granny intended. At the beginning of the book Elsa says:

If you don’t like people, they can’t hurt you. Almost-eight-year-olds who are often described as “different” learn that very quickly.

By the end she says:

...that even if people she likes have been shits on earlier occasions, she has to learn to carry on liking them. You’d quickly run out of people if you had to disqualify all those who at some point have been shits.

and

Because if a sufficient number of people are different, no one has to be normal.

This was such a beautiful book. There are little tidbits of wisdom throughout, a cast of interesting and complex characters, bits of humor, and a wonderful main character. I completely fell in love with Elsa. I bet you will too. I highly recommend this one.