My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry by Fredrik Backman

It’s hard to know how to describe this really special book by Fredrik Backman, author of the bestseller A Man Called Ove.  

Elsa is almost eight. She’s highly intelligent, really funny, deeply misunderstood, and bullied by her peers. Her best and only friend is her wildly eccentric but genius grandmother who gets up to all the kinds of mischief we wish we were brave enough to—while creating a mystical other world, “The Land of Almost Awake”, made of six kingdoms. Each has their own purpose and mythology which carry Elsa through her despair and thread through the narrative.

They all live in an apartment building populated by apparent misfits and it is when her grandmother suddenly dies and leaves a bereft Elsa a treasure hunt comprised of a series of letters apologising to all the tenants, that these characters and the magical stories come together. 

It is one of the most charming, warm hearted, make you laugh, properly make you cry books we have read. It’s a story about life and death and the relationship between young and old. But mainly it’s a tale that says it’s okay to be different. Because as Backman says, “if a sufficient number of people are different, no one has to be normal”. And that’s an empowering message if ever we heard one.