Britt-Marie was here

After the first couple of chapters, I fully expected a tale of a grumpy old woman softening over time, similar to Ove, you must understand. That’s not what Britt-Marie ended up being.

Her story was a lot sadder than that. A story of a woman without purpose who's been taken for granted and ignored for her 60+ years, and the run down town for her to belong. Britt-Marie isn’t some grumpy old woman, she just has to find the confidence to follow her own thoughts away from the people that never “needed” her.

Britt-Marie is a joy to follow throughout. Her little quirks like the way she says what she thinks, for better or for worse, with all the sincerity that she thinks it comes across as. The way she sticks to her lists and methods and ideals throughout and these aren’t treated as a flaw to be fixed but rather just a part of her.

I definitely was not expecting it to turn into such a sport focused story, with a lot of the situations throughout surrounding football but I am by not means disappointed. There’s some classic Backman tear jerker moments at times that landed well and I finished the book thoroughly loving everyone in that town (especially Sami, but not Kent).

  For the first half of Britt-Marie Was Here I was very much not impressed.  It felt like a weird story about a weird person in weird situations with minimal redeeming value.  Despite it being only 300 pages long I almost gave up on it.  After reading the second half of it I'm glad I didn't give up on it, although it is quite flawed.    Part of my issue with Britt-MarieWas Here is that it just feels awkwardly written.  I'm not sure if this is because of the translation (the book was originally written in Swedish) or not but the writing as a whole just feels clunky and weird and I can't tell if it's a purposeful stylistic choice or not.  I am tempted to give the benefit of the doubt to Backman and his translator as this is inherently a weird book and it's possible that the strangeness of the writing is supposed to add to the sense of abnormality present in the story.  Whatever the reason for it, I just don't like the style of the writing and it majorly detracts from my enjoyment of this book.    Another one of my issues with the book is Britt-Marie herself, especially in the first half of the book.  It feels like she's an alien who is just learning social norms.  Given that the book really needs you to relate to Britt-Marie in order for the emotional beats of the story to land, this is a major problem.  I simply cannot relate to a person who I just can't imagine existing.    With all of that said this book is far from irredeemable.  There are some emotional beats that in fact land hard and some of them are courtesy of Britt-Marie herself.  This is a book about identity and watching her struggle to find hers is a legitimately touching story at various points.  The supporting characters around her are also fantastic, particularly the kids.  They give the book the heart that it desperately requires.    All in all while Britt-Marie Was Here is far from the best book I've ever read, there are parts of it that will stick with me for a very long time.