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

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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" 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. Elsa is seven years old and different. Her grandmother is seventy-seven years old and crazy—as in standing-on-the-balcony-firing-paintball-guns-at-strangers crazy. She is also Elsa’s best, and only, friend. At night Elsa takes refuge in her grandmother’s stories, in the Land-of-Almost-Awake and the Kingdom of Miamas, where everybody is different and nobody needs to be normal. 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. Later-- she wrote a paper about her -great grandmother- from our family history. I was touched beyond words.

But, via a series of apology letters her grandmother wrote to various people she felt she had wronged, Elsa is sent on an adventurous journey that will enlighten her, challenge her perception of her beloved grandmother, and change the dynamics of her relationship with her mother and other family members, opening a door towards forgiveness and acceptance.Granny has been telling fairy tales for as long as Elsa can remember. In the beginning they were only to make Elsa go to sleep, to get her to practise Granny's secret language, and a little because Granny is just about as nutty as a granny should be. But lately the stories have another dimension as well. Something Elsa can't quite put her finger on.... The precocious Elsa is definitely beyond her years but it was hard at times to believe that a 7 year old would be as wise and knowing about people as she was . She's so smart and astute that you sometimes forget she's only seven until we see the insecurities and vulnerabilities of a seven year old dealing with her parents' divorce, confronting grief and death and her anxiety over having a half brother or sister and fear that she won't be loved as much . At night Elsa runs to her grandmother's stories, to the Land of Almost-Awake and the Kingdom of Miamas. There everybody is different, and nobody needs to be normal. I do not hate this book. Neither do I love it, or like it a whole lot. Or even like it a little bit. It just...exists.

Granny knew, and taught Elsa how to handle it through the fairy tales. Elsa learnt to run. Run very fast. She learnt to observe everything. She learnt to read and write properly. Grandma expected of her to read books to her while grandma drove her ancient rusting Renault around town, without a driver's license. Grandma could not spell. Almost-eight-year-old Elsa constantly had to correct granny's writing for her! Elsa started correcting everyone's writing. Even the notices at restaurants. She had Granny, Harry Potter, Wikipedia and Google at her disposal to get what she wanted. The words she did not understand, was added to her dad's word jar. My Grandmother Sends Her Regards And Apologises is a step above A Man Called Ove in literary terms, fusing stark Swedish realism with childhood imagination and fairy tales. While I didn’t find Elsa quite as endearing a main character as darling old Ove, she still provided a humourous and poignant insight into what might otherwise have been a very dark story. Elsa doesn’t know if this means that Granny took all her stories from the real world and placed them in Miamas, or if the stories from Miamas became so real that the creatures came across to the real world. But the Land-of-Almost-Awake and her house are obviously merging." Elsa because of her courage and her wisdom despite being almost eight years-old. And Granny because she's mad in the best possible way. There is a large cast of characters, each with their own stories and each drawn very sharply, and most important, each is weird in their own specific manner. Elsa, the protagonist, is a seven year old child, who behaves like a 17 year old frustrated teen. She is 'special' and hence gets bullied at school and has no friends. Her grandmother is her only friend but she dies of cancer, leaving Elsa to get on with a treasure hunt, which would lead her to uncover the stories of the weirdos living in the building.i will admit this took me a while to get into, but it was so worth it. because reading this book feels similar to making a new friend - by slowly getting to know them an 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. Review to follow. Took me some time to get past a let's say 3.2 rating. The final chapters pushed me over 3.5. Heartwarming story about families and people living in one house and specifically a little girl and her grandmother. Sometimes the story dragged on a bit, the fairytaleworld stories did not really appeal to me. Grandma is hilarious. Thinking about this... Author is talented for sure. A man called Ove was a stronger story for me. I am looking forward to Bear Town, which seems like a great one.... I mention make believe, and at times this book ventures into the realm of magical realism. Usually my experience with magical realism is a positive one, but I did not care for it much here. I think the reason might be that it frequently reminded me of Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane, which I didn't care for at all. So, if you are a fan of that book, you may enjoy this one, too. Creating fairy tale-metaphors for little Elsa, was her grandmother's way of teaching the hard realities of life in story form to the little girl without friends. Nobody understood this bright child, not even the teachers and headmaster at school, where she was constantly bullied. Her busy parents did not know what was happening to her.