My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry: A Novel

Fredrik Backman

Jun 2015 · Sold by Simon and Schuster

About this ebook

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.

Ratings and reviews

A delightful book that keeps you guessing and reminds you that things aren't always as they appear. A sweet walk through a lovely series of relationships with a poignant reminder to not judge others by what we hear from other people, but only to build our thoughts from our own personal experience.

Last year, I discovered the Best Translated Book Award, and since then, I have been reading a lot of fiction in translation. I'm so thankful that this path led me to Fredrik Backman's My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry, originally written in Swedish but scheduled for release in English in the United States next week. I loved this book! On the surface, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry is about "almost-eight-year-old" Elsa's quest to deliver a series of apologetic letters to friends of her recently deceased grandmother. Her journey is by turns hilarious and terrifying, and the book is well worth reading for this plot alone. However, Backman uses his story to explore deeper and more rewarding themes: whether a woman can truly balance a demanding career with motherhood without sacrificing one to the other; the special, and often magical, relationship between a grandmother and her grandchild; the perils and rewards of being "different." Both Elsa and Granny are complex and delightful characters; here is Elsa describing herself and Granny: "Other adults describe her as 'very grown-up for her age.' Elsa knows this is just another way of saying 'massively annoying for her age,' because they only tend to say this when she corrects them for mispronouncing 'déjà vu' or not being able to tell the difference between 'me' and 'I' at the end of a sentence. . . . You can tell she’s old because her face looks like newspaper stuffed into wet shoes, but no one ever accuses Granny of being grown-up for her age. 'Perky,' people sometimes say to Elsa’s mum, looking either fairly worried or fairly angry as Mum sighs and asks how much she owes for the damages. While my maternal grandmother was not quite as eccentric as Granny (having never stood naked on her balcony shooting at Jehovah's Witnesses with a paintball gun, for example), she too left a career she loved (in her case, as a professional dancer) to take care of me while my newly-divorced mother worked two jobs to support us. I still recall vividly the day she stopped at the drycleaner after picking me up from school and got so engaged in talking with an acquaintance that her Lincoln Continental (with me inside) rolled backward into a telephone pole before she realized she had forgotten to put it in park. Elsa and Granny would have understood perfectly as they watched us laughing hysterically once she caught up with the car. My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry is that rare book which transports you back to the wonders of childhood, where even the irritating middle-aged neighbor may turn out to be a princess in disguise, while simultaneously urging you to reassess those memories with the wisdom of age. There is something here for every reader. I received a free copy of My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

The first half of this I felt was slow and it took me six or so months to pick it back up but I am so glad I did. I loved this book. It made me laugh out loud and sob like a baby. This is a new favorite.

About the author

Fredrik Backman is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Man Called Ove, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry, Britt-Marie Was Here, Beartown, Us Against You, and Anxious People, as well as two novellas and one work of nonfiction. His books are published in more than forty countries. He lives in Stockholm, Sweden, with his wife and two children. Connect with him on Facebook and Twitter @BackmanLand and on Instagram @Backmansk.