'My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry': Book Review

Don’t let the long title scare you off

On my ever growing list of books to read, I’ve had this book on hold for some time. Thanks to a book club I have with my roommates, I decided this would be an interesting book to read. My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry is a book by Frederik Backman. Translated to English from Swedish, the book tells the story of seven year old Elsa coping with the loss of her strange and quirky grandmother, her best friend in the world. As the title suggests, her grandmother left Elsa apology letters to deliver to the people in her life for the various major and minor wrongs she’s committed toward them throughout her life.

I think it’s only fair to say my expectations going into this book were quite high. Backman has written A Man Called Ove, Beartown, etc. and I’ve also been informed he is the most followed author on Goodreads. Clearly he’s talented, and though I did like the book, I only really liked the last 60 percent of it.

The first 40 percent that that I wasn’t too interested in was a little too in my face with its theme. The grandmother is really out there, which is fine. My grandma is also a crazy lady (ask anyone who knows my Nanny) but this felt like the author was trying a little too hard to be different. She’s tried to break into a zoo, says outlandish and standoffish things and so on. She’s a cool character, it just felt a little over the top at places. Also, the beginning has to lay the groundwork for the fantasy world Elsa depends on based on her grandmother’s stories. In this, we see that Elsa is unconventional, as well, and doesn’t have any real friends. This leads me to my other issue with the beginning, that it was very difficult to get into Elsa as much as she does not sound like a seven year old. She feels like she’s much older with the intelligence of someone at least a few years older than she is. I understand her being seven to explain how she believes in her grandmother’s fairytale, but some of her thought processes and how she perceives things seem way too advanced than what would be possible.

That being said, once I adjusted, I loved this book. The turning point for me came when she met the Monster and the wurse; in other words, a quiet man with severe PTSD as a veteran, and a large dog respectively. I loved the Monster’s character. He had some real anxiety going on in his life, and I felt for him. He was interesting and I wanted to know more about him. I wish his character had more light and was given more development.

Though it was a dog, the wurse might have been my favorite character. The hulking dog was great from Elsa’s perspective. Because she’s seven, I could see why she would think it’s a wurse, a huge mythical creature from her grandmother’s fantasy world of Miamas. The wurse also helped me to finally establish a genre and tone for the book; it’s whimsical, offbeat and reads easily. It’s charming. The small oddities are written to be easily understood, but not simple. I like this tone, and it goes well for the magical realism genre that I believe this book fits in. There were small cues from the wurse that gave me the magical realism vibes. He would react to things people said with little movements or noises that made him feel a little too smart for your average dog. This whole book is from Elsa’s perspective, so obviously she is projecting things onto the world around her.

Magical realism can be a hard genre to pull off; it’s hard to balance reality and fantasy, but I think Backman does it very well. It’s always important for an author to maintain a consistent tone for your novel, and I have to commend an author when they do it with such a quirky tone. It could tip dangerously into being too unbelievable to keep you in the story. I never had that problem with this book. As I said before, once I got into the tone, it was fine.

I won’t talk too much about the ending, because it’s filled with tears and feelings. You deserve to experience it totally blind. Though it wasn’t my favorite book, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry was a nice, enjoyable read. I’d give it a 7/10, so I think it’s safe to say you should check it out.