My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry, Fredrik Backman

 

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

Started: 7/26/2022
Completed: 7/29/2022
Recommendation: Mild Recommendation
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

This book requires one to completely abandon reality in any sense.  Though it appears rooted in reality, the precocious 7 year-old is simply brilliant.  She has read the 8 Harry Potter books in excess of 20 times and reads at a pace that is beyond her very literate father.  Her abilities (she claims to have driven a car) are far outside the ability of a 7 year-old and that makes the book difficult for me.  What's more, everything hinges on the genius of this child, so it is critical to the book that you believe she is this way.  She has also learned a second "secret" language from her grandmother in which she can speak fluently.

Viewing the world through the lens of a fairy tale, however, seems like a good twist.  It just requires this genius child due to the circumstances and a wealth of fairy tells that the child has somehow memorized (while reading all that Harry Potter, and that is not the only book she has read well above her reading level) is just very difficult to believe.  It is necessary to the story, but it keeps dragging me out.  So, I enjoyed the premise of viewing the world through a fairy tale.  I also liked how the child interacts only with adults which makes it much easier to read through the dialog (though that is somewhat stilted on occasion).  The child is the narrator, but the author also describes things the child could not, so there are times when the child-as-narrator slips away.  So there are some big lapses, but this book does get a mild recommendation from me on the basis of the premise.