MY GRANDMOTHER ASKED ME TO TELL YOU SHE'S SORRY

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MY GRANDMOTHER ASKED ME TO TELL YOU SHE'S SORRY

Name: MY GRANDMOTHER ASKED ME TO TELL YOU SHE'S SORRY
Author: Fredrik Backman
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1506-6

by Fredrik Backman ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2015

A touching, sometimes-funny, often wise portrait of grief.

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A contemporary fairy tale from the whimsical author of A Man Called Ove (2014).

Elsa is almost 8, and her granny is her best—and only—friend. Elsa’s precociousness and her granny’s disregard for societal rules mark them as trouble to most people they encounter and make Elsa a pariah at school. But every night she can journey with her granny to the Land-of-Almost-Awake, made of six kingdoms, each with its own strength, purpose, and interlocking mythologies that Elsa knows by heart. In the Land-of-Almost-Awake, Elsa doesn’t have to worry about how she fits in at school, in the apartment building full of misfits where she lives, or in her family, where both her parents are divorced and remarried and her mother is pregnant. When granny passes away with very little notice, Elsa is bereft. And angry. So angry that it’s almost no consolation that Elsa’s granny has left her a treasure hunt. But the hunt reveals that each misfit in her apartment building has a connection to her granny, and they all have a story reflected in the Land-of-Almost-Awake. Neither world is short on adventure, tragedy, or danger. This is a more complex tale than Backman’s debut, and it is intricately, if not impeccably, woven. The third-person narrative voice, when aligned with Elsa’s perspective, reveals heartfelt, innocent observations, but when moving toward omniscience, it can read as too clever by half. Given a choice, Backman seems more likely to choose poignancy over logic; luckily, the choice is not often necessary. As in A Man Called Ove, there are clear themes here, nominally: the importance of stories; the honesty of children; and the obtuseness of most adults, putting him firmly in league with the likes of Roald Dahl and Neil Gaiman.

A touching, sometimes-funny, often wise portrait of grief.

Pub Date: June 16, 2015

ISBN: 978-1-5011-1506-6

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Atria

Review Posted Online: April 14, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2015

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

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THE WINNERS
by Fredrik Backman translated by Neil Smith

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ANXIOUS PEOPLE
by Fredrik Backman

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US AGAINST YOU
by Fredrik Backman ; translated by Neil Smith

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THE STORYTELLER

by Jodi Picoult ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 26, 2013

Still, a fictional testament as horrifying as it is suspenseful.

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A baker enlists a Nazi hunter to entrap a nonagenarian who may have brutalized her grandmother in Picoult’s ambitious latest.

Sage, who works in a bakery attached to a New Hampshire retreat center, prefers the overnight hours bakers keep. Her face is scarred (from a trauma not immediately revealed), and she is mourning her mother’s recent death. Having abandoned her Jewish faith, Sage is estranged from her two sisters, but she is still close to her grandmother, Minka, a Holocaust survivor. Josef, a much respected 95-year-old retired German teacher, confesses to Sage that he is a former SS officer, real name Reiner, who once was an Auschwitz guard. Sage calls in Leo, a Washington, D.C.–based FBI agent who specializes in tracking down Nazi fugitives. Leo asks her to elicit Minka’s story, never before told, in hopes of finding an eyewitness to Josef’s atrocities. Reiner’s and Minka’s wartime experiences form the bulk of the novel. Reiner, a bully recruited early by the Hitler Youth and later by the SS, is soon inured to slaughter by presiding over mass killings of Jews in Poland. Later assigned to Auschwitz along with his (comparatively speaking) gentler and more sensitive brother Franz, Reiner distinguishes himself as a particularly brutal overseer of the women’s camp. Franz, meanwhile, keeps his hands relatively blood-free by supervising the camp’s accounting office. Minka’s story takes her from an idyllic childhood as a baker’s daughter to the misery of the Polish ghetto and imprisonment in Auschwitz. Readers will see the final twist coming far in advance due to unwieldy plot contrivances which only serve to emphasize what they are intended to conceal.

Still, a fictional testament as horrifying as it is suspenseful.

Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2013

ISBN: 978-1-4391-0276-3

Page Count: 480

Publisher: Emily Bestler/Atria

Review Posted Online: Jan. 2, 2013

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2013

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
BY ANY OTHER NAME
by Jodi Picoult

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MAD HONEY
by Jodi Picoult & Jennifer Finney Boylan

- BOOK REVIEW
WISH YOU WERE HERE
by Jodi Picoult

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SNOW FALLING ON CEDARS

by David Guterson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1994

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Old passions, prejudices, and grudges surface in a Washington State island town when a Japanese man stands trial for the murder of a fisherman in the 1950s. Guterson (The Country Ahead of Us, the Country Behind, 1989, etc.) has written a thoughtful, poetic first novel, a cleverly constructed courtroom drama with detailed, compelling characters. Many years earlier, Kabuo Miyamoto's family had made all but the last payment on seven acres of land they were in the process of buying from the Heine family. Then the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and Kabuo's family was interned. Etta Heine, Carl's mother, called off the deal. Kabuo served in the war, returned, and wanted his land back. After changing hands a few times, the land ended up with Carl Heine. When Carl, a fisherman, is found drowned in his own net, all the circumstantial evidence, with the land dispute as a possible motive, points to Kabuo as the murderer. Meanwhile, Hatsue Miyamoto, Kabuo's wife, is the undying passion of Ishmael Chambers, the publisher and editor of the town newspaper. Ishmael, who returned from the war minus an arm, can't shake his obsession for Hatsue any more than he can ignore the ghost pains in his nonexistent arm. As a thick snowstorm whirls outside the courtroom, the story is unburied. The same incidents are recounted a number of times, with each telling revealing new facts. In the end, justice and morality are proven to be intimately woven with beauty—the kind of awe and wonder that children feel for the world. But Guterson communicates these truths through detail, not philosophical argument: Readers will come away with a surprising store of knowledge regarding gill-netting boats and other specifics of life in the Pacific Northwest. Packed with lovely moments and as compact as haiku—at the same time, a page-turner full of twists. (Author tour)