Fredrik Backman was my discovery of 2018. As I mentioned earlier, his novel A Man Called Ove was the best fiction book I read that year. That’s why I decided that I definitely needed to read his other books—or at least give them a try, since sometimes an author writes one exceptional work, but the rest don’t live up to it.
Backman’s second novel is intriguing from the title alone—My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry. It immediately makes you curious about who this grandmother is and what she’s apologizing for.
The main character of the book is a girl named Elsa, and her grandmother is quite a character. If Ove—the hero of A Man Called Ove—believed that life should be orderly and by the rules, Elsa’s grandmother is the complete opposite. She doesn’t accept any rules or laws, and Elsa adores her for it. Partly because every night in their dreams, they fly off to the magical land of Miamas together. And her grandmother is always on the lookout for adventures. Even her final quest for her granddaughter promises many mysteries and discoveries.
The most interesting thing is that, despite my super positive attitude going in, the first part of the book didn’t flow as smoothly for me as A Man Called Ove did. With Ove, I couldn’t put it down. Here, the rhythm was different, and while the grandmother is a colorful character, there’s just so much fantasy and make-believe that she feeds to her granddaughter.
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