My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She's Sorry

My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She’s Sorry

By: Fredrik Backman / Narrated By: Joan Walker

Length: 11 hrs and 2 mins

Blah - And I listened to ALL 11 hours!!!

Okay, so I very much realize Fredrik Backman is a master storyteller, but this? Really?!? My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry has one of the most truly deplorable heroines around. Actually, most of the characters are pretty annoying..

I suppose Elsa is supposed to be, I guess, a delightfully precocious little seven-year old girl (going on thirty, no doubt), but she’s really just a self-absorbed loud mouth. Part of it is the narration. Joan Walker makes Elsa’s persistent questions to those she’s supposed to relay her grandmother’s apologies to sound snappish, obnoxious, whiny at times. I had to listen to this at x1.50 speed, which made her interrogations more appalling, but at least got me through them more quickly.

There are tears galore in this book when actually the characters, her victims, should’ve throttled little Elsa. Heaven knows my own eyes rolled, my lips curled into a bit of a snarl, my pulse raced as I tried to quell the urge to strangle, to shriek, “Stop it already! Can’t you see what you’re doing?” But of course, there was healing aplenty in each and every case.

The one saving grace comes at the end when we get the aggravating Britt-Marie’s story, her background. That choked me up so much, her character arced into something so profound that, though I disliked this story grievously, I was compelled, I tell you, to purchase Britt-Marie Was Here.

Yes, I think this book is eleven hours of wretchedness, but I’ll let you know how the sequel is… You’re welcome; anything for a friend!