My Grandmother Sends Her Regards and Apologises: From the bestselling author of A MAN CALLED OVE

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The RRP is the suggested or Recommended Retail Price of a product, set by the publisher or manufacturer. After my first daughter was born... she, too, felt as though she knew her great- grandmother through stories I shared with her. The story takes place in Sweden and follows Elsa, a 7 year old who knows she is different from other children her age. She has a habit of correcting others' grammar, is smart for her age, and is especially close with her grandmother (Granny). When Granny passes, Elsa slowly discovers more about her grandmother's past identities, as well as the lives of people affected by her grandmother. While the characters are quirky and eccentric, the story has a slightly sinister undertone, because Elsa is afraid of ‘The monster’ which is more than just a part of her imagination and fairytales. Among Elsa's neighbours are eccentric chatterboxes and drunken workaholics, weird hounds and mysterious lurkers. Her mother is her punch-bag over teen issues (if Elsa can be called a teen that is) and her Dad is her word collector who can stand everything except a grammatically incorrect sentence. Well, mostly.

But overall this is a story of family and its complexities and mysteries, the regrets and mistakes, and triumphs and sacrifices made over the course of a lifetime, atonement, understanding, forgiveness, and embracing individuality. There were times I was LMAO with tears rolling down my face. Once, towards the end, I was sobbing so hard, I was afraid my husband would hear me in the next room. Told with the same comic accuracy and beating heart as [OVE] . . . It is a story about life and death and one of the most important human rights: the right to be different. * Laura's Little Book Blog *Apart from that, the surprise was wonderful. A Man Called Ove was one of my all-time favorite books, still is. This book, with a quirky, lovable, eccentric, unique cast of characters; its cheeky sense of humor; social commentary and tongue in cheek approach to the absurdities of 'Society', combined with fairy tales in the Harry Potter zeitgeist, kept me cemented to the plot and pathos of an extraordinary as well as entertaining story, written by a highly talented author.

Give the letter to him who's waiting. He won't want to accept it, but tell him it's from me. Tell him your granny sends her regards and says she's sorry" The novel suffers from a slow start. There is a fairy tale device that is interweaved into the narrative that never fully grabbed me, and it took me most of the book to buy into it. Other readers I know jumped right into that aspect of the text. To each his own, right? However, the last half of the book I thought was strong narratively, things started to fall into place for me with the fairy tale device, and from that point on I was fully in. Plus I normally really like reading Scandinavian-translated books (I am the worst) because I like the way it sounds when it’s English-ized. It still holds a nice poetic effect. But I didn’t get that from this? Maybe because the little-girl-main-character speaks English a lot. Dunno. Didn’t like it.I’m sure you will love both of them, although you might like this one more as it goes into a fantasy world. Post a Reply But, dear readers, hang on and try to follow the tedious fairytales which in fact, you will come to realise, are the life stories that in turn explain the problems/issues faced by the different characters in the book... Sorry, I refuse to say more in fear of releasing spoilers!! Granny does all she can to help Elsa through a hard time . Her parents are divorced and her mother and new partner are expecting a baby but worst of all Elsa is having a rough time at school . She has no friends and is constantly bullied. Granny gives this lonely little girl the gift of love and friendship and teaches her to cope by giving her a fairytale world in the Land-of-Almost -Awake. It captivated me at first but then I couldn't keep up with the details of the characters and the rules of this complex kingdom. But at some point I understood better who these characters were and just went with the flow because what is divulged about Granny's past will make you love her in spite of everything .

At some point, the author introduces a few twists to the story, adding a bit of thriller that just compels you to read on and think!!! The ending was worth every struggle through the sometimes overbearing fairytales!! I am not going to say anything else about the plot or the characters as this one is best going in cold if at all possible. I wouldn’t even read the blurb if you haven’t already. Let the story come to you. Props to the artist of the cover and to whoever came up with the title—both are perfect.

Summary

The book revolves around Elsa, mostly but as she relied on her grandmother greatly, although the grandmother dies early in the story, and thus she does not exist in the real world of the fictional world, she appears quite a lot and many quote her. The people surrounding Elsa can be categorized into two groups; one is the group of people standing in Elsa’s way, such as the irresponsible school faculty, her mother, her flat representative, Britt-Marie, the other group is those, who are outsiders and also friends of the grandmother and like her they encourage Elsa to be herself and defy the social norm; these include Alf, The Monster and so on. I am glad I was gently nudged to read this book and I couldn’t have chosen a better time to read this one. After having read several books in a row with melancholy themes, this book brightened my mood significantly.