My Grandmother Sends Her Regards and Apologises

I borrowed this book because I had just finished A Man Called Ove and wanted to see if Backman could be funny and sad in the same way twice. A friend who grew up in Sweden told me this one was messier and louder, with a kid at the center instead of a grump. She was right. I read most of it on a train and missed my stop because I needed to know who got the next letter. Fredrik Backman first published it in Swedish in 2013 as Min mormor hälsar och säger förlåt, and Sceptre published the English edition. The Sceptre edition runs 342 pages. In the United States the same work was published as My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry. This summary covers the full story, ending included.

Elsa is seven, almost eight. She is clever, blunt, and lonely at school. She corrects teachers about grammar, loves Wikipedia and Harry Potter, and gets bullied by older kids who see her difference as a target. Her parents are divorced. Her mother Ulrika works hard and loves Elsa but is often tired. Her father is kind in a distant way. Her stepfather George is well meaning and a bit clumsy with boundaries. Elsa also has a baby half sister that she both resents and protects. The one person who never makes Elsa feel wrong is her grandmother.

Granny is seventy seven, wild, loud, and full of stories. She climbs balconies, smokes, argues with police, shoots paintball guns from windows, and treats rules as suggestions. She is also Elsa's best friend. When Elsa is bullied, Granny tells her she is special and that bullies are afraid of people who think differently. When Elsa cannot sleep, Granny tells her tales from the Land of Almost-Awake. Those tales are not bedtime decoration. They are the spine of the book.

Elsa and Granny

The opening chapters stay close to the flat where Elsa and her mother live, and to the hospital where Granny is fading. Backman shows their rituals. Granny picks Elsa up from school in a way that embarrasses teachers. She lets Elsa eat candy for dinner. She teaches her swear words in several languages and then tells her when not to use them. She defends Elsa fiercely to the headmistress after a fight with bullies. Elsa, in turn, knows Granny's medicine schedule and hides her worry by asking for another story.

Granny has cancer. The book does not hide this. She coughs, loses weight, and goes to hospital more often. She jokes about it because joking is how she has always handled fear. Elsa knows more than adults think. She searches symptoms online. She listens at doors. She pretends Granny will get better because the alternative is unthinkable. One night Granny tells Elsa that she will have to go away soon and that Elsa must be brave. Elsa refuses to accept it. That refusal drives everything that follows.

Short break here. Granny dies early in the book.

Elsa finds out in the blunt way kids often learn hard news, through hushed voices and a mother who cannot find the right words. The funeral is small and strange. Elsa is angry at everyone, at her mother for crying wrong, at George for trying to help, at the priest for using flat phrases. She goes to Granny's flat and finds a letter addressed to her. It says Granny is sorry and that Elsa must deliver other letters to people in the house. It is a treasure hunt and an apology tour at once. Elsa does not want to do it. She does it because Granny asked.

The Land of Almost-Awake

To follow the letters, you have to follow the fairy tales. For years Granny told Elsa about the Land of Almost-Awake, a place made of six kingdoms that are almost asleep and almost awake. The central kingdom is Miamas, a place of music and courage where princesses fight and no one has to be normal. Around it are other lands with their own troubles. There are shadows, monsters, and wars. There are brave girls, runaway princes, and sea angels. There is a wurse, a huge beast that is part dog and part something older, who guards children and scares everyone else.

Elsa knows every story by heart. She has drawings, maps, and secret languages. She believes in Miamas the way other kids believe in football teams, fiercely and literally. Granny encouraged that belief because Elsa needed armor at school. If you are a knight from Miamas, being called weird in the cafeteria hurts less. Backman writes these tales with warmth and speed. A princess refuses to bow. A boy hides in a forest. A monster learns to read. The stories feel like classic fairy tales with jokes tucked inside.

What makes the book work is that each tale turns out to be about a real person in Elsa's building. The princess is Elsa herself. The brave healer is Granny at a younger age. The monster is a neighbor. The wurse is a large dog that drools on Elsa's shoes. She gets angry when the magic thins. She wants Miamas to stay separate.

I liked these sections best when they stayed simple. A short tale about a girl who would not sleep, a wurse who would not leave her side, a king who made bad choices. When Backman adds battles and histories for all six kingdoms, my attention drifted.

Letters to the neighbours

The main plot is Elsa carrying envelopes around the leasehold house where Granny also lived. Each letter is an apology. Granny wronged many people over a long, loud life, and she wants Elsa to say sorry for her. Elsa hates the job. She is grieving, she is seven, and strangers are scary. She goes anyway, often with the wurse trailing her, because she promised.

The first letters take her to people she already dislikes. Britt-Marie, the brisk woman who runs the residents committee and polices prams, laundry times, and parking with fierce notes. Alf, the gruff man who drives a taxi and shouts at kids. A woman Elsa calls the Monster, who lives with her son Sam and rarely leaves the flat. A man who drinks too much. An older couple who bicker. Each door opens onto a small life with its own grief. Britt-Marie is lonely and clings to order because order is all she can control. Alf is rude because he is scared and tired. The Monster hides bruises that are not only physical. The drinker hides shame. The bickering couple hide fear of illness.

Elsa delivers the letters badly at first. She throws one, reads one when she should not, refuses to knock for another. She asks blunt questions that adults find rude. How did you know Granny. Why did she say sorry. Did you hurt her. Are you crying. Those questions crack doors open. People invite her in for biscuits. They tell her pieces of Granny's past. They argue with each other about who Granny really was. Elsa collects contradictions. Granny was kind. Granny was selfish. Granny saved lives. Granny ruined dinners. All of it is true.

Two scenes show the method well. In one, Elsa must apologize to a neighbor Granny once reported to the police after a loud party. The neighbor is still angry. Elsa explains in her flat, factual way that Granny said sorry. The neighbor laughs, then cries, then offers hot chocolate. In another, Elsa brings a letter to Sam's mother and learns that Granny once helped them find housing when no one else would.

Britt-Marie, Alf and the Monster

The middle of the novel slows to let the building breathe. Britt-Marie deserves attention because she later got her own book. Here she is a comic and sad figure. She cleans stairs that are already clean. She leaves notes about bicycles. She cooks meatballs and judges other people's cleaning. Under that is a woman whose husband Kent treats her as staff, whose children have left, whose life narrowed to rules. Granny teased her without mercy. The apology letter to Britt-Marie is long and specific. Elsa reads part of it and feels embarrassed for both of them. Britt-Marie reacts by scolding Elsa, then by feeding her, then by asking about Granny's last days in a voice that is suddenly small.

Alf is the opposite surface. He smells of petrol, swears, and tells Elsa to get lost. His taxi is his castle. He fought with Granny for years about noise, dogs, and money. Elsa learns that Alf once relied on Granny for a loan and never forgave himself for needing it. He softens in actions rather than words. He fixes a door. He drives Elsa's mother to hospital without charging.

The Monster and Sam form the most tender thread. Sam is a quiet boy who loves music and fears his father. His mother, whom Elsa first sees as frightening, is actually frightened herself. Granny knew them during a bad winter and intervened in a way that was both brave and messy. The letter to them is the one Elsa dreads most because it forces her to see violence adults try to hide from kids. She learns that Granny once stood in a doorway and refused to move. She learns that grown ups can be heroes for ten minutes and flawed for ten years. Sam and Elsa bond over comics and silence. Their friendship gives Elsa someone her own age who does not ask her to be less strange.

The wurse belongs in this section too. In stories the wurse is a guardian. In life it is an enormous, slobbering dog that Granny once rescued and that now follows Elsa. It scares bullies, knocks over bins, and sleeps across doorways. Elsa talks to it like a person. Adults talk about it like a problem. By the end its real name and past matter less than what it does, stay close when Elsa is scared.

Granny's past and the final deliveries

As Elsa delivers more letters, Granny's history comes into focus. She was not only a joker and a rule breaker. She trained as a doctor, worked in war zones, drank too much, loved too fast, and made choices that saved strangers and hurt her own family. She left Elsa's mother alone for long stretches during childhood. She chose field hospitals over birthdays. She was brave under fire and careless at home. Ulrika grew up adoring and resenting her in equal measure. That tension now repeats with Elsa, who adores Granny and is starting to see the cracks.

One letter leads to a hospital colleague who tells Elsa that Granny once operated with little sleep to save a girl Elsa's age. Another leads to a man Granny loved and left. The point is not to excuse Granny. The point is to show a full person. Elsa struggles with this. She wants Granny to stay a hero from Miamas.

The final deliveries bring danger and release. Elsa confronts bullies at school with new steadiness, not because she is no longer scared but because she has practiced knocking on scary doors. She helps Sam and his mother during a frightening night when Sam's father appears. Neighbours who once only left notes now gather in a stairwell, call police, and stand together. Alf drives fast. Britt-Marie takes charge with lists that suddenly help. The Monster speaks clearly for the first time. Elsa watches adults act like the council of Miamas she imagined, arguing and brave at once.

Granny's last letter is to Elsa herself and to Ulrika. To Elsa, it says she was the bravest knight and must keep telling stories but also live in the waking world. To Ulrika, it asks forgiveness for absence and thanks her for raising Elsa with steadiness Granny never had. Elsa reads her own letter many times. She cries in a way she could not at the funeral. She also starts to forgive Granny for leaving, which is different from forgetting. The building holds a small memorial. People bring food. Sam plays music. The wurse sleeps by Elsa's feet. Life does not reset. It continues with one loud voice missing.

What charms and what crowds

The charm is obvious. Elsa's voice carries the book. She is funny without trying to be cute, logical in a way that exposes adult illogic, and loyal to Granny with her whole chest. The fairy tales give grief a shape kids can hold. Instead of saying Granny died of cancer and left debts of guilt, Backman says a queen left quests for her knight.

The crowding is the fair criticism. There are many neighbours, many letters, many kingdoms, many side plots about alcohol, divorce, unemployment, bullying, and housing politics. Some threads get a full meal, others get a biscuit. A drinker's story feels sketched. A school bully turns kind a beat too fast. Britt-Marie's cleaning routines get big laughs but repeat. The sentiment can also run hot. Speeches about being different, about stories saving us, about neighbours becoming family, arrive often and sometimes land on the same note. If you prefer spare prose, you may wish Backman trusted silence more.

I still closed the book fondly. At 342 pages in the Sceptre edition, it is longer than it needs to be, but its heart is clear. It argues that families are wider than blood, that sorry matters even late, and that a seven year old can hold both fairy tales and facts without dropping either. For readers who want laughter with tears and a community that slowly knits, this is an easy recommend. For readers who want tight plotting and dry restraint, the many letters and kingdoms may tire you before the last apology lands.