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.