My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry by Fredrik Backman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Ostensibly a sweet, charming fairy tale about the importance of fairy tales, the novel focuses on the conflict between an ideal world of a child and the ugly, real world of adults, with all their sins of the past. A precocious, know-it-all, almost-eight-year-old Elsa is mainly raised by her unconventional Granny; both are very different from their peers. Only people different than others can make a difference, the author seems to be saying.
I was enchanted with the whimsical sweetness of the novel for about 150 pages, then—alas—it overstayed its welcome. A delightful fairy tale turned into a second-rate mystery. The tedious uncovering of past secrets of the grown-ups eventually irritated me to the extent that I wanted to toss the book.
To end on a positive note, a nice passage from the novel:
"It's snowing again, and Elsa decides that even if people she likes have been shits on earlier occasions, she has to learn to carry on liking them. You'd quickly run out of people if you had to disqualify all those who at some point have been shits. She thinks that this will have to be the moral of this story."

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