My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry
Fredrik Backman, 2013
A seven-year-old, her irreverent grandmother, and a stairwell of odd neighbours, bound together by fairy tales and apology letters.
Feels like tenderness, grief and wonder. About family, adventure and friendship.
A page from the book
What we actually do with grief, since time doesn't shrink it.
People in the real world always say, when something terrible happens, that the sadness and loss and aching pain of the heart will “lessen as time passes,” but it isn’t true. Sorrow and loss are constant, but if we all had to go through our whole lives carrying them the whole time, we wouldn’t be able to stand it. The sadness would paralyze us. So in the end we just pack it into bags and find somewhere to leave it. Fredrik Backman.The original Swedish title is Min mormor hälsar och säger förlåt; Backman's follow-up to A Man Called Ove became a bestseller in Sweden before its English release.
Books that feel like this
More by Fredrik Backman
A Man Called Ove
Fredrik Backman, 2012
A grumpy Swedish man with strict rules and a Saab finds his orderly life interrupted by the messy neighbours next door. Funny, tender and sometimes bleak.
My Friends
Fredrik Backman, 2025
A teenage vandal, a perfect plan, and a painting worth more than a life—Backman’s funniest, most tender voice yet.
Anxious People
Fredrik Backman, 2019
A failed bank robber takes a roomful of apartment-viewing strangers hostage, and the police try to work out who is really trapped.
Where to get it
Some of these links earn us a small commission, at no cost to you. It keeps BookFeed free.
Questions readers ask
- What is My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry like?
- Feels like tenderness, grief and wonder. About family, adventure and friendship.
- What should I read after My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry?
- If you liked My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry, try Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (Lisa See), Where the Wild Things Are (Maurice Sendak) and Blue Sisters (Coco Mellors).
A taste of the feed
The friend everyone counts on, and what it costs to share him.
That’s Douglas. I count on him for everything. If I was stranded on a desert island and could only take one thing, it’d be Douglas. We can share him if you want.
Where the Wild Things Are · Maurice Sendak
Why calling a close friend a sister can feel like a small betrayal.
A sister is not a friend. Who can explain the urge to take a relationship as primal and complex as a sibling and reduce it to something as replaceable, as banal as a friend? Yet this status is used again and again to connote the highest intimacy. True sisterhood is not the same as friendship. You don’t choose each other and there is no furtive period of getting to know each other. You are a part of each other, right from the start. Look at an umbilical cord—tough, sinuous, unlovely, yet essential—and compare it to a friendship bracelet of brightly woven thread. That is the difference between a sister and a friend.
Blue Sisters · Coco Mellors
The sister who decides things cleanly, and the one who can’t.
I wave a spoonful of cookie dough under Margot’s nose, and she hesitates and then opens her mouth. I feed it to her like a baby. “Wait and see, you and Josh will be back together in a day, maybe two.” But even as I’m saying it, I know it’s not true. Margot’s not the kind of girl to break up and get back together on a whim; once she’s decided something, that’s it. There’s no waffling, no regrets. It’s like she said: when she’s done, she’s just done.
To All the Boys I've Loved Before · Jenny Han
Read pages from books like this, one at a time
Keep reading in the feed