My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry by Fredrik Backman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
The reviews on this book are all over the place. I think it might read differently if you read with your eyes. I was fortunate enough to pick the audio version up on Libby. Joan Walker (Narrator) made this book so fun and played the grandmother as well as she did the seven-year-old Elsa. She played the fantasy bits with so much energy that even the stories within the story jumped to life in my mind.
A friend recommended it to me when we were talking about the show A Man Called Otto that is on Netflix. I loved that movie so much that I have ordered the Audible version for later. But I love how the author, Fredrik Backman, blends unique characters with the mundane of life.
I have to admit to being taken aback that the author is male, as he brought up many of the issues of the modern woman and her family. I felt he wrote with a neutral point of view while holding onto the grandmother and the little girl and their individual visions of the world.
If I found this when my children were young, I would have read it aloud to them stopping to talk about the issues as they come up. There is a lot of cursing, but if a child of 12 hasn’t bumped into that in real life, you are keeping them under an imaginary rock, and you may not realize what they hear. So reading it as the grandmother and characters speak would give a person an opportunity to explain why or when that talk is appropriate, or not.
But even if you are reading sans children, you can enjoy it from your inner child. I highly recommend this book.
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My Friends by Fredrik Backman
