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Book Review: My Grandmother Told Me To Tell You She’s Sorry

My Grandmother Told Me To Tell You She’s Sorry by Fredrik Backman

Atria Books, 2016

ISBN-13: 9781501160486

Available: Hardcover/Kindle edition/Audio Download/Compact Disc

 

Elsa is seven, “going on eight”. Her world looks bleak: she is too mature for her age. and is bullied and friendless at school.  Elsa’s parents are divorced.  She lives with her mother, who is tied up in her work and has little time for Elsa.  Fortunately, she has a tight bond with her grandmother.  Granny is seventy-seven, a retired doctor with a mysterious past.  For many years, she travelled the world helping others caught up in disasters, but spent little time at home raising Elsa’s mother.

Every evening at bedtime, Granny tells Elsa tales about a fantastic world called the “Land-of-Almost-Awake.”  That world has kingdoms with battling armies, princesses, heroes and beasts.  Granny and Elsa have a secret language.  One kingdom is named “Miamas” because Elsa called pajamas, “mjamas”, when she was younger.

As the story progresses, the separation between the fantasy world and the real world becomes obscured.  Elsa, her mother, and Granny live in separate flats in an old apartment building.  Tenants in the other flats are cantankerous and quirky.  Some might have superpowers and unknown connections to Granny’s past.  Most are human, but two tenants, who are never seen, might not be.  They are a hooded giant known as  “Monster”, and the “Wurse”, a huge, hairy canine.

Then Granny dies, leaving Elsa the task of delivering letters of apology to some of the tenants, as well as other people she has known.  Can Elsa evade malevolent creatures from the fantasy world she created with Granny as she tries to carry out Granny’s wishes?  Will she learn who the tenants really are. and what Granny really did in her other life?

My Grandmother Told Me To Tell You She’s Sorry perceptively and sympathetically portrays an exceptional, young girl’s struggle to fit into a world in which she is too mature for her peers, yet excluded from the secrets of adults.  When her Granny dies, Elsa loses her sanctuary and must try to reconcile her fantasy world with reality.  The characters are well drawn, and the plot moves along with an appropriate pace.  Fredrik Backman has written two other novels, A Man Called Ove and Britt Marie Was Here.  These novels also describe the dilemmas and problems misfits encounter in the world of ordinary people. Highly recommended for older children, teens, and adults.

Reviewed by: Robert D. Yee

Posted on October 6, 2017 by , Reply

Book Review: Of Foster Homes and Flies by Chad Lutzke

Of Foster Homes and Flies by Chad Lutzke

CreateSpace, 2016

ISBN-13: 978-1535073363

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition, Audible audiobook

Fatherless Denny Christopher Newman, age twelve, just wants to win the spelling bee. The only thing that may stand in his way is the death of his often-drunk, neglectful mother, rotting in her recliner, during the beginning of a hot summer in New Orleans. Denny’s only friends are the family dog, Ingrid; his classmate, Carter; and Sam, a carefree girl traveling to the west coast, whose words have a positive effect on young Denny. The story is told through Denny’s perspective, after he finds his abusive mother dead.  Despite their blood ties, he only feels dread that he won’t be able to participate in the spelling bee. She always told him his studying for such a thing was a waste of time, that is was a pointless activity. He sets out to prove her wrong, and do something worthy of making his father proud.

Sitting here writing this review, I can still experience the emotional roller coaster when I think about what he went through from the very first page. The horror comes in subtle ways: in the realization that despite that he will never have to be demeaned by his mother’s words and inaction, her body is decomposing in the living room; the need to make his parents proud of something, anything; recognizing he can’t provide for the family dog but not wanting her to remain in the hot house, overheating and suffering herself; and when he finds his mother’s notebook, with her scrawls and terrible words…I wanted to save Denny from the rest of the story.

My emotions were all over the place reading this novella. At times I empathized with Denny, at others I was Denny. Lutzke is an expert craftsman at getting just the right emotional emphasis at the right time. I don’t know how he does it, but Lutzke is able to tap into that awkward part of childhood for those of us who never quite fit in, who experienced strained relationships at home, and who always tried their damnedest only to be batted off into the corner by a few of the adults in our lives. Highly recommended.

Contains: child neglect, some physical and olfactory description of rot

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker

 

Posted on September 28, 2017 by , Reply

Book Review: Little Heaven by Nick Cutter

Little Heaven by Nick Cutter
Gallery Books, 2017
ISBN-13: 978-1501104213
Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, Audible

Nick Cutter is one of the hottest names in horror fiction, and for good reason. I have read all four of his books now, and I the praise for each was certainly warranted. I enjoyed The Deep and The Acolyte but his debut novel, The Troop, is outstanding. At a time when major publishers were shy about hardcover horror, this wicked intense, character-rich, body horror novel was a major hit. It worked in part because, despite a modern setting, it felt retro in all the right ways, like a a golden age of horror paperback classic. People rightly compared to it to classic Stephen King. I thought it was an effective and disturbing horror novel that made the best of a lean prose style.

Little Heaven, Cutter’s fourth book, is a masterpiece of horror fiction, and a tribute to the 1980s, even more so than The Troop did. As good as his last two books were, they missed the retro feel that made The Troop special.  Although some readers have compared Little Heaven to classic King, it’s more influenced by the work of Clive Barker and Robert McCammon. The setting and characters suggest that Cutter was also influenced by Cormac McCarthy, and the structure and dialogue are reminiscent of Quentin Tarantino. Take all this narrative chemistry, and it adds up to a novel that feels like others, but is actually like nothing I have read before (it’s also nice to see that he has escaped the Bentley Little title disease– finally, a novel that is not The ___ Whatever “.)

Little Heaven is the story of four trained killers given the mission to rescue a young boy whose father has taken him to a compound called Little Heaven, in the New Mexico desert. Cutter clearly has fashioned the cult after real-life cults. We soon learn that the killers are not normal humans. The supernatural elements have a surreal quality that brings to mind early Clive Barker. Monsters, such as the Long Walker, were disturbing in how unnatural they were, yet described so well you can see them in your mind. It’s nothing short of creepy.  Cutter creates vivid landscapes, and the horrors pop off the page, causing several cringeworthy moments of supernatural horror.

The narrative switches back and forth from the mid-60s to the 80s, and the structure unrolls the story in an unconventional but very effective manner. We know the four mercenaries survived something which changed them, and they are haunted by what they have seen. As in Robert McCammon’s Gone South, the characters are both scary and hilarious at times. The prose itself is excellent. This novel delivers exactly the feeling of the classics, and causes me to turn the pages, and that’s all I’m asking for. I think this is the best Cutter book to date, and the best horror novel in years. Highly recommended.

Reviewed by David Agranoff

Here’s an audio review David did of Little Heaven with fellow author Anthony Trevino.

 


Posted on May 5, 2017 by , Reply
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