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Book Review: My Grandmother Told Me To Tell You She’s Sorry

My Grandmother Told Me To Tell You She’s Sorry by Fredrik Backman

Atria Books, 2016

ISBN-13: 9781501160486

Available: Hardcover/Kindle edition/Audio Download/Compact Disc

 

Elsa is seven, “going on eight”. Her world looks bleak: she is too mature for her age. and is bullied and friendless at school.  Elsa’s parents are divorced.  She lives with her mother, who is tied up in her work and has little time for Elsa.  Fortunately, she has a tight bond with her grandmother.  Granny is seventy-seven, a retired doctor with a mysterious past.  For many years, she travelled the world helping others caught up in disasters, but spent little time at home raising Elsa’s mother.

Every evening at bedtime, Granny tells Elsa tales about a fantastic world called the “Land-of-Almost-Awake.”  That world has kingdoms with battling armies, princesses, heroes and beasts.  Granny and Elsa have a secret language.  One kingdom is named “Miamas” because Elsa called pajamas, “mjamas”, when she was younger.

As the story progresses, the separation between the fantasy world and the real world becomes obscured.  Elsa, her mother, and Granny live in separate flats in an old apartment building.  Tenants in the other flats are cantankerous and quirky.  Some might have superpowers and unknown connections to Granny’s past.  Most are human, but two tenants, who are never seen, might not be.  They are a hooded giant known as  “Monster”, and the “Wurse”, a huge, hairy canine.

Then Granny dies, leaving Elsa the task of delivering letters of apology to some of the tenants, as well as other people she has known.  Can Elsa evade malevolent creatures from the fantasy world she created with Granny as she tries to carry out Granny’s wishes?  Will she learn who the tenants really are. and what Granny really did in her other life?

My Grandmother Told Me To Tell You She’s Sorry perceptively and sympathetically portrays an exceptional, young girl’s struggle to fit into a world in which she is too mature for her peers, yet excluded from the secrets of adults.  When her Granny dies, Elsa loses her sanctuary and must try to reconcile her fantasy world with reality.  The characters are well drawn, and the plot moves along with an appropriate pace.  Fredrik Backman has written two other novels, A Man Called Ove and Britt Marie Was Here.  These novels also describe the dilemmas and problems misfits encounter in the world of ordinary people. Highly recommended for older children, teens, and adults.

Reviewed by: Robert D. Yee

Book Review: Some Girls Are by Courtney Summers

Some Girls Are by Courtney Summers

St. Martin’s Griffin, 2010

ISBN-13: 978-0312573805

Available: Paperback, Audible, Audio CD, Kindle edition

Anyone feeling nostalgic for the glory days of high school will drop that nostalgia right in the trash bin within pages of beginning Some Girls Are. Our protagonist, Regina, is the best friend of the high school Mean Queen, Anna, and as the only sober person at a party she decides to do her duty as the designated driver and take Anna, who has passed out, home, over the vehement objections of Anna’s boyfriend, Donnie. who then attempts to rape Regina. Regina flees the party, ending up at her “friend” Kara’s. Kara convinces Regina to stay quiet, but uses the information to convince Anna that Regina slept with Donnie. Anna’s revenge is to knock Regina from the top of the high school pecking order to the very bottom. Anna orders her friends and hangers-on to persecute Regina, and Kara makes it her personal mission to destroy Regina in every way, even establishing an online social media page dedicated to hating her. While some of the attacks are over-the-top, and it’s rather alarming that not a single adult picks up on what’s going on, Summers still managed to make me a witness to the events and emotions that carry the story.

You would think the attacks on her would make Regina a sympathetic character, but she’s not. As Anna’s right hand she’s been there and done this to other kids at Anna’s bidding, including Liz, who attempted suicide, and Michael, now labeled “most likely to become a school shooter”. And it’s clear that Regina knew exactly what she was doing, if not its complete impact: she felt guilty, but she wasn’t a blind participant. She knows herself well enough that she doesn’t expect others to like or forgive her, and fights back viciously against her former friends whenever she has the opportunity. The way the teens in this book treat each other is often brutal and callous, and there is plenty of schadenfreude, selfishness, cowardice, and anger to go around. But there’s also a tiny ray of hope as Regina and Michael begin to build a tentative connection. The entire thing has the feel of The Chocolate War, if Jerry Renault had fought back, or found even a momentary kindness.

Regina has a strong voice and even though she is not a particularly sympathetic character, I grew to respect her and hope for her continued positive development. It’s not necessary to like her to be appalled by her treatment. I felt that Summers did a good job of presenting the multiple faces and feelings of important characters like Michael, Kara, and Liz, although I would have liked to know a little more about Regina’s previous relationship with Liz. While Anna and her other friends were pretty flat, the characters Summers did choose to develop were definitely three-dimensional.

Some Girls Are was recently challenged in South Carolina, and I can see why a parent would be uncomfortable with this book. Sexual assault, bullying, drug use, and suicide are difficult to read about or talk about, and no parent wants to believe this could be happening in their own child’s school. This is a gripping and horrifying read, especially because the monsters are human rather than supernatural, and it rings true. If this is the kind of thing kids today are facing in high school, a book like Some Girls Are, at least for mature readers, definitely has a place.  Recommended for ages 15 and up.

Contains: bullying, sexual assault, underage drinking, drug use, attempted suicide, language.

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski