My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry in WACKY READING CHALLENGES

Jan 04, 2021 Irene rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2021, love-the-cover, ebook, disappointing, its-not-you-its-me, tedious-to-read, unpopular-opinion, 1-star, frustrating, free

*2021 Popsugar Reading Challenge*
Prompt #33: A book featuring three generations (grandparent, parent, child)

Forced myself to finish this in one sitting because of how much I hated the reading experience. It's not that it's objectively a bad book - in fact, I can see why so many people love it - but I hated the central character of the grandmother so much that I couldn't stand any of it. A person who cares more about other people's children than their own is not someone I can admire, and the craz *2021 Popsugar Reading Challenge*
Prompt #33: A book featuring three generations (grandparent, parent, child)

Forced myself to finish this in one sitting because of how much I hated the reading experience. It's not that it's objectively a bad book - in fact, I can see why so many people love it - but I hated the central character of the grandmother so much that I couldn't stand any of it. A person who cares more about other people's children than their own is not someone I can admire, and the crazy things the grandma did were literally just too psychotic for me to handle. And just to clarify - there were ZERO characters I liked in the book, aside from Ulrika, Elsa's mother. Which is a problem when you have as big a cast of characters as this book.

Also, I normally love abstract writing and stories with ambiguous elements, but the heavy fairy tale metaphors that appear in EVERY SINGLE CHAPTER of this book (usually in the form of at least a few paragraphs) were tedious to read through and felt ridiculous after the first few chapters. I could not tell what was going on half the time, and even now, having finished the book, I am very confused. Some parts of the book actually say that it's fairytale logic at work when something that doesn't make sense conveniently happens.

And yes, I hated the ending. (view spoiler)

And on a final note, the heavy, incredibly redundant praise for Harry Potter did not age well, especially given the ending of this book.

I'm so glad I did not pay a cent for this book, and am now doubting if there's a point in me reading any of the author's other books. All my issues were with the characters and child-fairy-tale-understanding-of-the-world narration, however, since I did not have a problem with the writing itself, so I hope I do someday find a Fredrik Backman book is not excruciating to read.

(To update review later with quotes) ...more

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Feb 11, 2022 *Dawn rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: audio-from-library, fiction, family, read-in-2022

3-1/2*
Excellent narration by Joan Walker

I find that Fredrik Backman's stories are slow reading, often drawn out and even somewhat dull in places, then hard to put down in others, so the reading of them feels kind of push-and-pull ("I think I can, I think I can"). Once you near the end, however, and his secrets are revealed, you see how he has weaved together the plot, characters, and heart of the story. I'm not that smart myself, but I wouldn't be surprised if people call his writing kind of gen ...more

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