The grand daughter is only seven but behaves like a grown up.
“A rather stupid grandmother with her elderly granddaughter a the central figures. My favourite Amazon reviews of My Grandmother Sends Her Regards And Apologises: I’m grateful to Backman for the ever-timely reminder. Everyone has hidden depths, even precocious seven-year-olds and their eccentric grandmothers. The take-home message is that you never really know someone. (Updated to add: I was right! Read my full review of Britt-Marie Was Here here.) Luckily, I’ve got a copy on my to-read shelf, ready to go whenever the mood strikes. I suspect, with the Britt Marie character’s arc, that one of Backman’s other books – Britt Marie Was Here – picks up where My Grandmother Sends Her Regards And Apologises left off. There’s nothing wrong with Elsa at all she just likes correcting other people’s grammar, and makes full use of her active imagination. Backman doesn’t stuff around trying to make Elsa’s quirks fit a specific set of diagnostic criteria. It struck me, towards the end, that this is a much better less-pathologised version of The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time. While I didn’t find Elsa quite as endearing a main character as darling old Ove, she still provided a humourous and poignant insight into what might otherwise have been a very dark story. My Grandmother Sends Her Regards And Apologises is a step above A Man Called Ove in literary terms, fusing stark Swedish realism with childhood imagination and fairy tales. I’ve drawn you a map, because I found it quite hard to keep track for the first couple hundred pages. They live in a house of flats, with a large cast of quirky neighbours forming a de facto extended family. Granny takes Elsa on marvellous adventures, talks their way out of trouble, and teaches Elsa how to stand up to the kids who bully her at school. Her Granny (who’s “old for her age”) is her superhero, and Elsa’s best (only) friend. The young girl knows she’s different from other children, though the adults call it being “smart for her age”. 
Once again, the story takes place in Sweden, but instead of a curmudgeonly old man, it follows seven-year-old Elsa. The rights for translation have been sold in over 40 countries after the success of A Man Called Ove, everyone was banking on another hit from Backman. This book was first published in the original Swedish ( Min mormor hälsar och säger förlåt) in 2013, then it was translated into English ( My Grandmother Sends Her Regards And Apologises, or in the US, My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She’s Sorry, which doesn’t quite have the same ring to it) in 2015 by Henning Koch.
(If you use one of the affiliate links on this page, I’ll earn a small commission, and I’ll send you my regards and gratitude.) Buy My Grandmother Sends Her Regards And Apologises here.
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