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Book Review of My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry
reviewed on + 1436 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 8


Sometimes a book mirrors life. So it is with this one. I found it a magical book and if you like magic just a little perhaps this one is for you. So many quotes seemed meaningful to me that I marked eight as I went. (I'm not usually one to do that but I used eight bookmarks so I could find them again.) I love Elsa, the key character, and her grandmother is a kick. You can't help laughing about and with her. There is so much in this read. Grandmother is forever telling fantasy tales to Elsa about a magical land and its residents. When she dies Elsa finds herself on a quest to deliver letters to many of her grandmother's friends and she discovers that they are the characters in those wonderful stories. A few quotes from this read:

Elsa asks her mother, "Don't people get married because they're full of love and then divorced when they run out of it?"

And, talking to a neighbor who lost her husband and two sons, the woman gives her a book that she once read to her boys. Elsa has read it but lies "because she's polite enough to know that if someone gives you a book, you owe that person the pretense that you haven't read it."

Finally, about her grandmother as Elsa talks to a man who attends her funeral, she asks it he was in love with Grandmother. He answers, "She was the love of my life, Elsa. She was the love of many men's lives. Women as well, actually." Elsa asks if he was hers. His response, "No, that was you. It was always you, dear Elsa."