My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“She shouldn’t take any notice of what those muppets think, says Granny. Because all the best people are different—look at superheroes. After all, if superpowers were normal, everyone would have them.” 

Elsa knows that she is different from the other kids. Her sophisticated vocabulary, her penchant for reading, and her habit of correcting the grammar of adults all distinguish her from her peers. Only Granny considers Elsa’s uniqueness to be a wholly positive quality. This is because Granny herself doesn’t quite fit society’s expectations for women. She has spent her life breaking stereotypes, such as becoming a surgeon when few women went to medical school. For Granny, being different is synonymous for being special and interesting, and only those who are different can make the world a better place.

“Protect the castle, Elsa. Protect your family. Protect your friends!’ Granny repeats determinedly.” 

For Elsa, Granny’s words are confusing. She knows that the castle refers to the apartment building where they live, because that is what Granny has always called their house. However, she can’t figure out why Granny is telling her to protect her friends when she doesn’t have any. Granny assures her that the friends will come; still, Elsa can’t understand what she is supposed to protect them from. Through the story, Elsa realizes that Granny is asking her to prevent the apartments from being turned into leaseholds, and to join the other tenants in protecting themselves against Sam. As Elsa delivers Granny’s letters, she learns that Granny made a similar requests to the tenants, to protect the castle—and to protect Elsa.

“It’s possible to love your grandmother for years and years without really knowing anything about her.” 

Elsa has an incredibly close relationship with Granny. However, Granny kept much of her former life private from Elsa. Elsa pieces together the details of Granny’s past through interactions with the other tenants. For example, Granny and Elsa share what Elsa refers to as a “secret language.” As far as Elsa is concerned, it is theirs and theirs alone. But when she meets The Monster for the first time, she realizes that he also speaks the language. He later reveals that he was the one who first taught it to Granny. This is the first time Elsa realizes that Granny had close relationships and friendships with lots of other people. This realization makes Elsa feel at times betrayed and even jealous, since she herself only ever had Granny for a friend.

“The girl turned to the queen, stared her right in the eye, and said, ‘no.’ […] And before long, not only the girl but all the other people in the Kingdom, even the Yea-Sayers and the Paragraph Riders, were shouting ‘No! No! No!’ and then the prison crumbled. And that was how the people of Miaudacas learned that a queen only stays in power for as long as her subjects are afraid of conflict.” 

Granny’s story about “The Girl Who Said No” was based on Mum as a young girl, because Mum was a contrary child who had often said “no” to Granny. Despite this, Mum became the kind of person who avoids conflict for the sake of efficiency. Granny, on the other hand, embraces conflict as a necessary part of making positive change in the world. Therefore, Granny’s fairy tale is meant to teach Elsa that conflict is often an important and necessary part of standing up for what is right, even if it involves disobeying an authority figure.

“Because not all monsters were monsters in the beginning. Some are monsters born of sorrow.” 

Granny’s story of the sea-angel explains how the woman in the dark skirt came to be the building’s drunk. She was originally a beautiful, loving mother and wife, but the tragedy of losing her family was too much to bear, and she drowned her sorrows in alcohol. The story teaches Elsa that we need to be compassionate toward people with weaknesses and negative behaviors, because these behaviors are often directly tied to horrible circumstances they have experienced in the past.

“Elsa had been very afraid that night and she had asked Granny what they would do if one day their world crumbled around them. And then Granny had squeezed her forefingers hard and replied, ‘Then we do what everyone does, we do everything we can.’ Elsa had crept up into her lap and asked: ‘But what can we do?’ And then Granny had kissed her hair and held her hard, hard, hard, and whispered: ‘We pick up as many children as we can carry, and we run as fast as we can.’” 

For Granny, war is not a hypothetical concept; it is very real, something she experienced firsthand. When she tells Elsa that they would pick up as many children as they can and run, this is what Granny has been doing all along: saving the lives of as many people as she could. Granny is teaching Elsa that it might not be possible to completely erase war and destruction from the earth, but that shouldn’t stop us from pursuing what is good and right in the world.

“Mum is silent. ‘All superheroes have to make sacrifices, darling,’ she tries at last. But both she and Elsa know she doesn’t mean it.” 

After Granny’s death, Elsa learns that during most of Mum’s childhood, Granny was far away, saving lives. Though this is admirable, it meant that Mum grew up essentially without a mother to take care of her. When Elsa realizes this, her opinion of Granny is altered, and she becomes very critical of Granny’s choices. On the other hand, Mum, who has been at odds with Granny for most of her life, attempts to justify Granny’s decisions.

“She couldn’t answer because she doesn’t want Mum to know that she doesn’t want to be a big sister. Doesn’t want anyone to know that she is this horrible person who hates her own half sibling, just because Halfie is going to be loved by them more than Elsa. Doesn’t want anyone to know she’s afraid they’ll abandon her.” 

Elsa is jealous of her sibling-to-be. While Elsa’s feelings are typical of a child who is about to become a sibling, her emotions are heightened due to the loss and rejection she experienced when Mum and Dad got divorced and when Granny died.

“Elsa realizes that he is telling her what was in the letter because he understands what it’s like when people have secrets from you just because you’re a child.” 

As a highly precocious child, Elsa is aware that adults often keep important information from her because they believe she is too young to understand, and she finds this frustrating. The most serious example of this is when no one—not even Granny herself—tells Elsa about Granny’s terminal cancer. When Granny dies, Elsa is not prepared for the event, and the shock of it makes her feel abandoned and betrayed. Thus, Elsa is angry with Granny, and it takes her a long time to forgive her.

“She has a terribly bad conscience about abandoning the wurse yesterday. Alf could have called the police and they would have shot it. Elsa abandoned it like Granny abandoned Mum and this scares her more than any nightmares.” 

Elsa is greatly affected by Mum’s explanation of how she was left to raise herself on her own when Granny went off to serve as a doctor in the wars. Though Granny has always been her hero, Elsa is learning that there are ways in which she does not want to follow in Granny’s footsteps, particularly with regard to taking care of those you love. Thus, Elsa is determined to take responsibility for the wurse.

“Granny hated the environment, but she was the kind of person you brought along when you were going to war.” 

Elsa realizes that Granny didn’t fight the newspaper office for her own sake; she did it entirely for Elsa. This recognition of the depths of Granny’s love and loyalty further confuses Elsa, because she wants to be angry at Granny for lying and abandoning her.

“If you don’t like people, they can’t hurt you.” 

Elsa fears that if she allows herself to like George, she will be disappointed when the baby is born and he forgets about her. She prefers not to have any relationship with him rather than have her heart broken later. Though Elsa is speaking about herself here, the quote can also apply to other tenants—such as Wolfheart, the woman in the black skirt, and even Britt-Marie, all of whom put up emotional barriers and shut themselves off from people because of their fear of rejection or disappointment.

“The mightiest power of death is not that it can make people die but that it can make the people left behind want to stop living.” 

Though people often say that time will heal the pain after a loved one dies, Elsa knows this is not true. Granny taught her that sorrow always exists; we simply learn to compartmentalize it so that it doesn’t consume us. In Granny’s fairy tales, this is represented by the kingdom of Miploris, where travelers go to drop off their luggage full of sorrow. They can then go on with their lives without being burdened by grief.

“But when they came up the mountain and all the fears welled out of the caves, the golden knights didn’t fight. […] Instead the knights did the only thing you can do with fears: they laughed at them. Loud, defiant laughter. And then all the fears were turned to stone, one by one.” 

Granny tells this story every time Elsa is scared of something, and it always makes her feel better. According to Granny, we must face our fear head on, aware that it exists but confident that we are stronger than the thing we fear.

“She thinks about Wolfheart and the sea-angel living next door for so many years without anyone knowing the first thing about them. If holes were drilled in the walls and floors of the house, all the neighbors could reach out and touch one another, that was how close their lives were, and yet in the end, they knew almost nothing about the others. And so the years just went by.” 

At the beginning of the story, the tenants are coexisting in Granny’s building rather than sharing it. In order for Elsa to make the right decision about what to do with the building once she owns it, she must get to know her neighbors on a personal level. For this reason, Granny arranges the treasure hunt, knowing that delivering the letters will help Elsa form friendships with them.

“Dad clears his throat. Looks like dads do when it suddenly dawns on them that something they used to do because it was important to their daughters has now become one of those things their daughters do because it’s important to their dads. It’s a very thin line to cross. Neither dads nor their daughters ever forget when they do cross it.” 

One of the few bonding activities Elsa shares with Dad is their yearly trip to buy the (fake) Christmas tree. Up until now, it has been a tradition that was mostly important to Elsa; Dad went along with it to make her happy. However, this year Dad is the one who remembers the date, and he has to remind Elsa that today is the tree shopping day. This signifies that Elsa is growing up and becoming less attached to the traditions of her childhood; conversely, Dad is becoming more attached to them.

“Most likely they told her a whole lot of damned things she wasn’t allowed to do, for a range of different reasons. But she damned well did them all the same. […] That’s damned well how you stand up to bastards who tell you what you can and can’t do. You bloody do those things all the bloody same.” 

Elsa tells Alf that her classmates say she can’t be Spider-Man because Spider-Man is a boy. Alf says that many people told Granny she also couldn’t do or be certain things. For example, practicing medicine was not customarily done by women at that time, and yet Granny did it. Alf is teaching Elsa that the way to stand up to people who try to tell you what you can’t do or be is to simply prove them wrong by going ahead and doing it anyway.

“I mean...sort of kill, anyway. I know one shouldn’t think people deserve to die. But sometimes I’m not sure people like him deserve to live…”

“It’s human.”

“Is it human to want people to die?”

“It’s human not to be sure.” 

Elsa admits that sometimes she wishes someone would kill Sam. Elsa’s thoughts echo Granny’s uncertainty whether she did the right thing years ago by saving Sam’s life. Though Granny is a doctor whose job is to save, not destroy, lives, she also wrestled with the moral question of whether a person who exhibits such capacity for evil should be allowed to continue living. Alf doesn’t offer an opinion either way, but he validates Elsa’s feelings.

“It’s snowing again, and Elsa decides that even if people she likes have been shits on earlier occasions, she has to learn to carry on liking them. You’d quickly run out of people if you had to disqualify all those who at some point have been shits. She thinks that this will have to be the moral of this story.” 

Elsa learns that people cannot be easily categorized as “good” or “bad.” People she likes, such as Alf, have all committed selfish or thoughtless acts in the past. Even people she has loved forever, like Granny, have some faults. Part of Elsa’s growing maturity is learning to accept people’s faults and loving them anyway.

“I don’t hate at all, Ulrika. I actually don’t. I only wanted you to listen to me. Is that so much to ask? I just didn’t want you to leave the car in my place. I actually just didn’t want you to come and take my place.” 

After Kent’s heart attack, Britt-Marie allows herself to confront his unfaithfulness for the first time. Now that she is being honest, she can finally admit her true feelings of loneliness and insecurity over the years, and that she attempted to conceal them with her nagging, officious behavior. This marks a turning point in Britt-Marie’s relationship with Mum, Elsa, and the other tenants, and they are able to finally form bonds of friendship.

“It’s going to be the greatest adventure ever having you as a brother, Harry. The greatest, greatest adventure!” 

Much of the wisdom Elsa gains throughout the novel comes from her neighbors’ stories. When Alf tells her about his bitter feud with his brother Kent, Elsa decides that she doesn’t want to have that kind of relationship with her own sibling, so she vows to bond with him from the start. When she first meets Harry, she promises that she will tell him all about Granny and the Land-of-Almost-Awake, as well as his namesake, Harry Potter.

“And then Britt-Marie drives off. She doesn’t know where. But she’s going to see the world and she’s going to feel the wind in her hair. And she’s going to solve all her crosswords in ink.” 

Britt-Marie has lived her life afraid to take chances. But below the surface, Britt-Marie harbors dreams of excitement and daring. After reading Granny’s letter and finally making peace with her, Britt-Marie drives off in Granny’s Renault in search of her own adventure. Now that Britt-Marie is finally free of Kent’s control, she can live life on her own terms.

“They all still have a residents’ meeting once every month in the room on the bottom floor. They all argue, as ever. Because it’s a normal house. By and large. And neither Granny nor Elsa would have wanted it any other way.” 

By the end of the novel, all the tenants’ lives have changed, mostly for the better. Britt-Marie embarks on her adventure, Kent and Alf are reconciling, and the woman in the black skirt and Wolfheart are attending therapy. However, some things remain the same, including the monthly residents’ meeting, which always involves a lot of disagreement. Elsa is fine with this, which reveals how she has grown and matured in her acceptance of human imperfection.