My Grandmother Sends Her Regards and Apologises

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She shouldn’t take any notice of what those muppets think, says Granny. Because all the best people are different—look at superheroes. After all, if superpowers were normal, everyone would have them. At this point too, I thought, my 12 year old needs to be in on this so, I let him listen to a few chapters and confirmed its a book for both young adults and adults. However, it is not long into the book when the fairly complex and very childlike fairytales seem to take over the real story. And one might be tempted to either skip the parts with the fairytale (which would prove tedious given how intertwined the fairytale parts are with the underlying real story) or give up reading the book altogether on the premise that for adults, the film (when it does come out) would be better tuned to keep adults engaged!! Description: Elsa is seven years old and different. Her grandmother is seventy-seven years old and crazy. Standing-on-the-balcony-firing-paintball-guns-at-men-who-want-to-talk-about-Jesus-crazy. She is also Elsa's best, and only, friend. 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.

But one day someone decided she was too old to save lives, even if Elsa quite strongly suspects what they really meant by “too old” was “too crazy.” Granny refers to this person as “Society” and says it’s only because everything has to be so bloody politically correct nowadays that she’s no longer allowed to make incisions in people. And that it was really mainly about Society getting so bleeding fussy about the smoking ban in the operating theaters, and who could work under those sorts of conditions? But the unimaginable happened just before Christmas. Grandma died of cancer. Elsa lost her only friend. What was it about death that was so devastating? "The mightiest power of death is not that it can make people die, but that it can make the people left behind want to stop living"… However, grandma taught Elsa that life does not really end with the passing of a beloved. "You never say good-bye in the Land-of-Almost-Awake. You just say “See you later.” It’s important to people in the Land-of-Almost-Awake that it should be this way, because they believe that nothing really ever completely dies. It just turns into a story, undergoes a little sh The novel suffers from a slow start. There is a fairy tale device that is interweaved into the narrative that never fully grabbed me, and it took me most of the book to buy into it. Other readers I know jumped right into that aspect of the text. To each his own, right? However, the last half of the book I thought was strong narratively, things started to fall into place for me with the fairy tale device, and from that point on I was fully in. Heartbreaking and hilarious in equal measure, by the author of the New York Times bestselling phenomenon A Man Called Ove will charm and delight anyone who has ever had a grandmother.The policeman stands up without a word, walks out of the room and closes the door behind him, as if intending to go into another room and bury his head in a large, soft cushion and yell as loud as he can. Granny is busy distributing small heaps of tobacco all over the wooden table in front of her and rolling them into rustling cigarette papers. I was bowled over when I discovered, after finishing the book, that it was written by the author of A Man Called Ove. Yes, I know I was a bit dimwitted. But just remember, it is every single person's undeniable right to make a fool of him/herself, and I am exercising that right by admitting this here! By saying this I admit being in total cohorts with Grandma in the story. I not only liked her; I recognized her as a soulmate! 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. Plus I normally really like reading Scandinavian-translated books (I am the worst) because I like the way it sounds when it’s English-ized. It still holds a nice poetic effect. But I didn’t get that from this? Maybe because the little-girl-main-character speaks English a lot. Dunno. Didn’t like it.

And so begins Elsa's adventure, part quest, part treasure hunt, part superhero mission, Granny's letter leads Elsa first to the door of a wurse, and then The Monster (also known as Wolfheart), another letter leads her to the Sea-Witch and yet another much later to the Princess of Miploris. With each letter, offering apologies and regrets, Elsa unravels the truth about the fairy tales that form the foundation of the Land-of-Almost-Awake, and the secrets of her grandmother's exceptional life. If you loved Ove, you might love shrewd, intelligent, wise, cranky, funny as hell Grandma too. You will recognize the humor and daring thoughts at play.Granny doesn’t answer. Elsa takes off her Gryffindor scarf and puts it in her lap. She was born on Boxing Day seven years ago (almost eight). The same day some German scientists recorded the strongest-ever emission of gamma radiation from a magnetar over the earth. Admittedly Elsa doesn’t know what a magnetar is, but it’s some kind of neutron star. And it sounds a little like “Megatron,” which is the name of the evil one in Transformers, which is what simpletons who don’t read enough quality literature call “a children’s program.” In actual fact the Transformers are robots, but if you look at it academically they could also be counted as superheroes. Elsa is very keen on both Transformers and neutron stars, and she imagines that an “emission of gamma radiation” would look a bit like that time Granny spilled Fanta on Elsa’s iPhone and tried to dry it out in the toaster. And Granny says it makes Elsa special to have been born on a day like that. And being special is the best way of being different. Elsa immediately Googles it on Granny’s phone. It takes her a few attempts—Granny’s always been a terrible speller. Meanwhile the policeman explains that they’ve decided to let them go, but Granny will be called in at a later date to explain the burglary and “other aggravations.”

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. Elsa’s love of Wikipedia is hilarious at times, but it’s her fondness for Harry Potter books that was so telling. That she related to those characters, is a testament to how stories and books can offer relief and comfort, as well as influence and teach. Everyone remembers the stories their grandmother told them. But does everyone remember their grandmother flirting with policemen? Driving illegally? Breaking into a zoo in the middle of the night? Firing a paintball gun from a balcony in her dressing gown? Seven-year-old Elsa does.A must-read for fans of Rachel Joyce's The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and Maria Semple's Where'd You Go, BernadetteHeartbreaking and hilarious in equal measure, by the author of the New York Times bestselling phenomenon A Man Called Ove will charm and delight anyone who has ever had a grandmother. Everyone remembers the smell of their grandmother's house. Everyone remembers the stories their grandmother told them.But does everyone remember their grandmother flirting with policemen? Driving illegally?Breaking into a zoo in the middle of the night? Firing a paintball gun from a balcony in her dressing gown?Seven-year-old Elsa does.Some might call Elsa's granny 'eccentric', or even 'crazy'. Elsa calls her a superhero. And granny's stories, of knights and princesses and dragons and castles, are her superpower. Because, as Elsa is starting to learn, heroes and villains don't always exist in imaginary kingdoms; they could live just down the hallway.As Christmas draws near, even the best superhero grandmothers may have one or two things they'd like to apologise for. And, in the process, Elsa can have some breath-taking adventures of her own ...

At the heart of the story is a seven year old girl without friends, an outsider in her school who is loved deeply by her cantankerous , seventy-seven year old grandmother. I was taken by Elsa and her grandmother from the very beginning. It's the story of the beautiful legacy that a grandmother leaves her granddaughter. Granny may seem crazy but she is such a very loving grandmother to Elsa that the things she does while they seem crazy , can be so easily forgiven by the reader once her story unfolds and you see what a good person and really a humanitarian she is . 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.... Ah, come on, your mum can mend that,” says Granny, trying to be cheerful, giving her a little punch on the shoulder. But the unimaginable happened just before Christmas. Grandma died of cancer. Elsa lost her only friend. What was it about death that was so devastating? "The mightiest power of death is not that it can make people die, but that it can make the people left behind want to stop living"… However, grandma taught Elsa that life does not really end with the passing of a beloved. "You never say good-bye in the Land-of-Almost-Awake. You just say “See you later.” It’s important to people in the Land-of-Almost-Awake that it should be this way, because they believe that nothing really ever completely dies. It just turns into a story, undergoes a little shift in grammar, changes tense from “now” to “then.”She left a set of letters behind which would merged Elsa's two worlds. She would be introduced to the real people who were characters in the fairy tales, and who would open up a big world of possibilities to the seven-year-old heartbroken little girl. I am also the child’s legal guardian! I am the child’s grandmother!” Granny fumes, rising slightly out of her chair and shaking her unlit cigarette menacingly.Eventually a heavyset policewoman with piercing green eyes comes in instead. It doesn’t seem to be the first time she’s run into Granny, because she smiles in that tired way so typical of people who know Granny, and says: “You have to stop doing this, we also have real criminals to worry about.” 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." After my first daughter was born... she, too, felt as though she knew her great- grandmother through stories I shared with her. Standing on the pavement waiting for her mother, Elsa fingers the rip in her scarf. It goes right through the Gryffindor emblem. She tries as hard as she can not to cry but doesn’t make much of a success of it.