My Grandmother Sends Her Regards and Apologies

'Granny has been telling fairy tales for as long as Elsa can remember. In the beginning they were only to make Elsa go to sleep, and to get her to practise granny's secret language, and a little because granny is just about as nutty as a granny should be. But lately the stories have another dimension as well. Something Elsa can't quite put her finger on...'

Elsa is seven years old and different. Her grandmother is seventy-seven years old and crazy. Standing-on-the-balcony-firing-paintball-guns-at-men-who-want-to-talk-about-Jesus-crazy. She is also Elsa's best, and only, friend. At night Elsa runs to her grandmother's stories, to the Land of Almost-Awake and the Kingdom of Miamas. There, everybody is different and nobody needs to be normal.

So when Elsa's grandmother dies and leaves behind a series of letters apologizing to people she has hurt, it marks the beginning of Elsa's greatest adventure. Her grandmother's letters lead her to an apartment building full of drunks, monsters, attack dogs, and totally ordinary old crones-but also to the truth about fairytales and kingdoms and a grandmother like no other.

My Grandmother Sends Her Regards and Apologises 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.


This book had me laughing out loud in the dentist's office in the first 8 pages of the book. I remember thinking to myself, "MAN, I hope the entire book can keep up this momentum!", but I was highly doubtful, and apparently right...Not that it was bad. Actually, I really liked this book. But that first chapter sent my expectations sky high in the humour aspect., but it still was an amazing book. 


Backman has an extremely effective way of writing from a child's perspective without making the writing seem juvenile. Often when author's write from a child's perspective you either have the undignified semantics (like Room), or a disconnect from the child's psyche and ability compared to their writing (or thinking?) style. Backman was able to avoid both of these issues by making Else extremely bright and yet have her learning constantly throughout the book. There are times during Elsa's conversations with adults that if they say a word she doesn't know, she leaves to go find out what it means (usually finding a computer to check wikipedia). It gives her a credibility for her large vocabulary and makes it OK to use words far beyond what a 7 (almost 8) year old* would normally use. She also has great perspectives on issues that may be a big deal to a child but not an adult. For example, when talking about her birthday she says "no child with a birthday two days after Christmas ever gets the same amount of attention as a child born in August of April" (not to mention, WHOA! It's like she's talking directly to me!). We all recognize that it's not ideal to have a birthday close to Christmas, but sometimes I don't think we realize how much that actually effects a child. It certainly effects Elsa, and she has an extremely articulate way of letting the readers know. 

Being that Elsa is so intellegent, it seems important to note that Harry Potter seems to be a bit of prerequisite reading for this book. That obviously wasn't a problem for me, in fact, I particularly enjoyed the references, but is something to be aware of. Being that Elsa is a well read 7, almost 8, year old, it is to be expected. It makes me wonder just how much of an influence Harry Potter was on the initial transcript of this book. Perhaps it was more closely related before the book went through the editing process. Not that it actually matters, the book is what it is NOW, not what it was during the editing process, but... still... it's an interesting thought. 

An enjoyable side note to this book is the interesting choice of chapter titles. All of them were extremely relevant without spoiling of the plot. Most of the chapter titles were objects, and their relevance was not revealed until the moment the reader is made aware of their existence. It was a very effective way of drawing attention to miniscule, yet important details without underestimating the reader, and also gave a method for the reader to be able to look for specific parts (which is the point of chapter titles, right?) without giving anything away.

I really feel that this book is a lot more involved with the reader than most. There is this element throughout the book where Granny's fairy tales from another land (the land of almost awake) are woven into the reality of Elsa's life so fluidly that it had me questioning which came first, the tales or the reality? But then I came to the conclusion that it didn't really matter. However the reader decided to interpret is acceptable. I would never be able to argue one way or the other than someone that felt strongly in that regard. There were times when I really wanted to skip over the fairy tale parts to get back to the "real" stuff, but the fairy tales added to much depth to the story and gave so much more insight into the characters that although they seemed frivolous at times, they are actually completely necessary to understand the story in it's entirety. 

This book is a complete and total recommend to pretty much everyone that enjoys reading fiction. If you need some "Street Cred" in order to read a book about fairy tales and 7 (almost 8) year old girls, then know that this book was originally written in Swedish and was translated to English. And you probably haven't heard of it. It's not ridiculously popular, so that leads us to the fact that it is a great book with high accolades that deserves to be translated into a multitude of languages, unlike some that are just translated to other languages because it got really popular (like 50 Shade of Grey, or the Twilight series or something) 

* Elsa flips between stating she is an "almost eight year old" or "only a seven year old" depending on whether she wants to be seen as more mature, almost an adult, or a child that too much cannot be expected of". I loved her interchanging response to how old she was.