My grandmother asked me to tell you she’s sorry, by Fredrik Backman

A newly translated novel by the Swedish author of the beloved A man called Ove, with yet another cranky, singular character, seven-year-old Elsa’s seventy-seven year-old grandmother.  Elsa lives with her very pregnant mother and her mother’s new partner, George.  The building they live houses not only them and, in another apartment, Granny, but a cast of misfits and eccentrics worthy of a fairy tale.  And fairy tales make up a great part of the story, perhaps too much for my taste.  Granny weaves tales of the Land-of-Almost-Awake and the Kingdom of Miamas to comfort the precocious and lonely Elsa.  She has no friends of her own age, misses her father, also in a new relationship, and fears she will lose her place in her mother’s heart to “Halfie,” the soon to be born half-sibling.  When Granny dies, Elsa is left with the task of delivering various apologies from her to people, many of them residents of her apartment, whose interconnectedness was unknown to her previously.  Charming, full of wit and love, but a bit heavy on the make-believe.  371 pp.