My Grandmother Sends Her Regards and Apologises
Reviews
heartwarming read just like other works of Backman. Always get me through tough times in my life, giving it a light and humorous insightful direction!
This book took me on an emotional rollercoaster ride from start to finish. At times, the humor had me laughing so hard that tears streamed down my cheeks. During the poignant conclusion, I found myself so invested in the characters that I cried openly, moved by the story's powerful impact. I had to stifle my sobs in case my husband overheard in the other room! This ability to seamlessly blend comedy and tragedy, sparking such a vivid spectrum of feelings within me, is a testament to the author's masterful storytelling. An awesome read that I won't soon forget.
When I was reading this book I wasn’t sure it would achieve a 5 star rating. However the emotion and heartbreak I felt reading the last 50 pages tipped the balance. This is a story of grief and understanding which tugged at the heartstrings from page one. It had such an interesting cast of characters, each with strong personalities and motives. Separately they are complex individuals but together they formed the most wonderful found family I am extremely close to my Nan and we share a love of Harry Potter. Therefore this book really resonated with me. My heart broke and found love in the most unexpected places alongside Elsa’s. Therefore despite a slow start this book has my heart
This book is ultimately about grief and about how we deal with it and how we move on. Following a seven year old main character as she navigates this journey for the first time. This writing is just lovely, so many relatable lines that offer hope and reflection to the reader. Credit to Henning Koch for doing such a brilliant job of maintaining the beauty of this book through the art of translation. This book balanced a made up world with a very real and stark reality and showed how the two knit together in a way I felt was reminiscent of the film Big Fish, which was an aspect I really liked. Although I felt I was waiting for the plot to pick it’s direction for about half of the book, which made it quite slow going for me for quite a while. But once the pacing picked up, I couldn’t put this book down and found myself falling in love with all the characters, even the worse I started off strongly disliking. A really beautiful story, with beautiful messages and a really unique and inspiring young lead.
Truly beautiful story.
Highlights
Because without music there can't be any dreams, and without dreams there can't be any fairy tales, and without fairy tales there can't be any courage, and without courage no one would be able to bear any sorrows
It's very difficult not to love someone who can hear you say something as horrible as that and still be on your side.
Because if a sufficient number of people are different, no one has to be normal.
"We want to be loved," quotes Britt-Marie. "Failing that, ad mired, failing that, feared; failing that, hated and despised. At all costs we want to stir up some sort of feeling in others. Our soul abhors a vacuum. At all costs it longs for contact."
Don't fight with monsters, for you can become one. If you look into the abyss for long enough, the abyss looks into you.
Instead the knights did the only thing you can do with fears: they laughed at them. Loud, defiant laughter. And then all the fears were turned to stone, one by one.
People in the real world always say, when something terrible happens, that the sadness and loss and aching pain of the heart will lessen as time passes', but it isn't true. Sorrow and loss are constant, but if we all had to go through our whole lives carrying them the whole time, we wouldn't be able to stand it. The sadness would paralyse us. So in the end we just pack it into bags and find somewhere to leave it.
Because not all monsters were monsters in the beginning. Some are monsters born of sorrow.
'Only different people change the world' Granny used to say. No one normal has ever changed a crapping thing.
“Well, maybe it sounds stupid now, but it seemed more logical at the time! Everything seems obvious in hindsight!"