Fredrik Backman is today a well-known author even outside Sweden. I understand many of you are a fan of his books. Before this book, I had only read the excellent A Man Called Ove, so it was with a little bit of anticipation I started this one.
It is a different story from his first one but has Backman's sharp eye on society and people's behaviour. It is about people who are different and don't 'fit into 'normal' society. I don't know if this is maybe typical Swedish? Everyone has to be like everyone else, you should not stick out. Honestly, I think this might not be so typical in the Sweden of today, but definitely was when I grew up.
Elsa is an almost eight-year-old girl who is mobbed in school. Her only friend is her grandmother who supports and care about her. To help her she creates a fairy-tale country; The Country-Almost-Awake. There everything is different, meaning no one needs to be normal.
Then her grandmother dies and leaves Elsa alone. However, she has left a treasure trail of letters for her to deliver to persons in her house. They all have a common theme; she says that she is sorry for what she has done. The grandmother is a woman who lived her life as it came. However, she dedicated it to save people. She's a doctor and travelled all over the world, wherever there was a crisis she was there. Being there for strangers who needed her, meant she was not there for her own family. Is it worth the price saving lives of people you do not know and not being there for your family and the people you love?
The make-believe world of the grandmother and Elsa contains monsters, fighting dogs, drunks, knights and dragons and the typical inhabitant of fairy-tales. As she gets to know them better and analysing the stories her grandmother told her, she realises that all is not a fairy-tale, these people also live nearby her. in different disguises.
It is quite a complex story that Backman is telling us. It feels somewhat long at parts but comes together beautifully in the end. As always he gives you a lot of things to think of when it comes to life, how we interact with our fellow beings and just the way things are. It is full of humour and sadness and lets us think there is hope in the end.
Comments
Post a Comment