Elsa is 7 years old and her grandmother is her favorite person. Her grandmother was a famous surgeon and aided many children during the wars. They both live in the same apartment building. Her grandmother has instilled a love of fairy tales and literature in Elsa and is her staunch defender. When Elsa’s grandmother dies from cancer, Elsa is left to perform her grandmother’s last wishes of delivering apologies to multiple people. This sets Elsa on a course of adventure and discovery.
Amy’s Review
As with my favorite Fredrik Backman books, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry is filled with wonderful, damaged people, his intuitive handling of human nature, and lots of humor. (I laughed out loud several times in this one!) And police. And, also like his other novels, this one is both heartwarming and heart wrenching in a way that made me cry at times. It was beautiful. I loved it! And I definitely appreciated all the Harry Potter references within the story. The crafting of this one was masterful!
I hadn’t known this going in, but Britt-Marie is in this novel…the same character as the protagonist of his later novel (which I read prior to this one), Britt-Marie Was Here. So Backman, obviously, spun off her own novel from this one. That was a pleasant surprise! I caught, in this novel, when Britt-Marie said she only wanted someone to remember “that she was here”. Well, you can tell by the title of the novel about her, that is exactly the story of the spin-off. I also couldn’t help but notice that there is a Lennart in this novel. I wonder whether he was the same Lennart later included in Backman’s Anxious People.
The audiobook narrator, Joan Walker, was absolutely phenomenal! She’s a talented voice actress and has a wonderful variety of character voices. Backman’s writing was funny but she made it in even funnier in her delivery. A+! I see that I had also given her an A+ for her narration of Britt-Marie Was Here when I listened to it 3 years ago.
Lynnie’s Review
I love Fredrik Backman and I really wanted to love My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry, and I enjoyed it, but I was also frustrated by it. Maybe it was because I only had the audiobook and because I felt rushed (it had to be returned to the library—my fault!), I didn’t go back and read or listen to sections that I might have revisited if I were reading.
I thought Elsa was a fascinating, if unreliable, narrator and the fantasy world that she and her Granny shared was interesting, if often confusing. Again, I chalk that up to my own distractions as none of my other friends seemed to have this issue.
I nearly abandoned this book more than once but I’m glad I stuck with it—once again Backman brings it all home with an emotional message of goodness and humanity.
The audiobook narrator, Joan Walker, was wonderful. I enjoyed her vocal repertoire and never doubted who was speaking. Don’t listen to it at bedtime, though—her voice is very soothing and I fell asleep listening to her more than once.
No comments:
Post a Comment