Britt-Marie Was Here: A Novel
By: Frederik Backman / Narrated By: Joan Walker
Length: 9 hrs and 18 mins
Beautiful—Simply Beautiful!
My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry was such a wretched, wretched story, jam-packed with obnoxious adults, and a pint-sized protagonist who took Relentlessly Precocious Child to Hellish depths. But, it turned out, Britt-Marie wound up being the ooooonly intriguing character in the entire audiobook, a person with a warm and heartbreaking character arc, amongst the many, many losers. But her end made her so very compelling that I was drawn to Britt-Marie Was Here.
And at the very beginning, I wondered to myself if she was going to return to her small-minded, shallow, mean-spirited self, the character she was for most of My Grandmother…
So, I was surly for the first 20 mins. of this audiobook. Ahhhhhh, but then the story, Britt-Marie herself, totally BLOSSOMED into a most and truly beautiful thing!
Fingering the spot on her finger where once she wore a wedding band, writing Lists in pencil, in pen, always, always, ALWAYS wanting to clean clean clean, Britt-Marie finds herself newly free and in desperate need of a job. After harassing The Girl at the unemployment office, she takes a temporary position at a clubhouse in a small, oh so small, community hard-hit by the economic crash.
The characters Backman comes up with are lovely, and the way Joan Walker voices all of them? Not an obnoxious one in the lot! Each one of them is written with love, and the story takes its sweet time to develop each of them, to develop relationships that deepen with time and experience.
There are children who’ve learned far too much of the tragedy that Life can be; there’s a policeman who believes in Justice more than he believes in the Law; there’s an earnest rat who becomes one of Britt-Marie’s closest confidantes. And then there’s Britt-Marie herself. Oh, what a WONDERFUL depiction of a person ill-used during her life who comes to realize that she’s strong, loving, and that, wonder of wonders: She has a sense of humor.
The way Backman writes! The Girl, Somebody, the Rat—though none are given names, all are given flesh and blood, heartbeats, hearts galore. There are sports, there are fights, there are friendships.
There are hard luck stories, and we can see that even the worst stories are made soooo much better with openness, with honest and sincere love.
And again: Joan Walker rocks as narrator! Even the door chime, the tiny bell that jingles dolefully, that jingles cheerfully is given a heart and a soul with her skillful and loving narration.
I’ve included Britt-Marie Was Here for our Mom’s Birthday Listens cuz, even tho’ she expressed no interest in it, I think it’s an absolutely beautiful, heartbreakingly beautiful, listen that I think will really touch her.
Mom ROCKS!!!
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