Reviews with content warning for Grief - Le Monde Selon Britt-Marie

Reviews tagging 'Grief'

Le Monde Selon Britt-Marie by Fredrik Backman

22 reviews

grayshuff's review against another edition

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emotional funny hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

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angorarabbit's review against another edition

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emotional funny hopeful reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

TLDR: Exceeded expectations. It is better than the blurb suggests.

Three chapters in I was sure this was another male author’s attempt at writing a funny-middle-aged-lady story. Including funny characters like you find in funny little villages. Another chapter was enough to convince me to stick around a while and see what happened. Slowly you learn about what brought Britt-Marie to this point in her life. Slowly you learn that the funny village people have had not so funny lives. There are profound thoughts about grief folded into the funny bits.

Against my will I started to smile and then giggle with Britt-Marie. At the end I had an acute allergy attack that required the use of a not insignificant amount of paper handkerchiefs. Mr Backman has learned that a feel good ending needs tragedy to spice the joy and he wrote it in the perfect way..

Mr Backman gets points for his portrayal of women at different places in their lives and for not allowing his male characters to overshadow them. He also gets points for a boy wanting his hair to look nice with his date with another boy the perfect normal thing that it is; and his portrayal of Beck and Somebody’s struggles with disabilities and their importance to their community. Fiction has improved over the decades in its portrayal of the lgbtqaa* community but it is still rare for me to read a book with a character with disabilities for some reason of other.

I wish Britt-Marie, Vega, and Omar all the good in their fictional world. But something in me hopes that Kent continues to visit Borg to play soccer. And maybe afterwards stops at the pizza place/car mechanic/post office/ bodega to watch the game and have a beer with Sven. There is a lot the two of them could learn from each other.

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_pauline's review against another edition

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funny sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.75

This combines elements from a man called ove (main character), beartown (small town/village setting, sports, characters) & anxious people (funny writing,

robbery

), but I don’t think it’s boring or repetitive even if you’ve read his other books.

it went from “low stakes story with a premise & MC similar to ove“ to “simultaneously heart wrenching & funny“ to

“you did not seriously just kill off one of my favourite characters“

Britt-Marie finds it extremely impolite for Somebody to interrupt her in the midst of dying.

'I was waiting here for you to stop looking deceased. Got hungry, you know, so I had a bit of lunch'

Some people had pulled Britt-Marie out of the car; she doesn't know who, but she knows that her mother, silently furious, never forgave them for saving the wrong daughter. Maybe Britt-Marie didn't forgive them either.

Next to the plate she put a note, written neatly in ink: 'Out on a date. Or a meeting. Or whatever it's called nowadays. No need to put away your plate when you have finished, it's no trouble at all for me.' She wanted to write something about how she hoped the rat would find someone else to share its dinner with, because she did not feel the rat deserved to eat alone. Loneliness is a waste of both rats and people. But her common sense ordered her not to get involved in the rat's personal choices about social relationships, so she left it at that.

'If something happens to me can you promise you'll look out for Omar and Vega and make sure they're all right? Can you promise me you'll find good people to look after them?' …
He has made her promise that she won't sit up all night waiting for his car to come back. But she does it anyway.

I‘m not sure how to feel about

the open ending, but it does make sense for the story

character ranking:

vega
the rat
ben (pirate)
britt-marie
sami
sven
the white dog (SO close to being a ts reference he just chose the wrong colour)
unemployment office girl
somebody, max, the other kids
everybody else
literally anyone
kent (though he did change for the better)

my current ranking of Fredrik Backman’s books:

the winners (5⭐️)
beartown & us against you (5⭐️)
anxious people (5⭐️)
britt-marie was here (4.75⭐️)
a man called ove (4⭐️)

If you want to get an impression of his sense of humour, watch the speech he gave at the Simon & Schuster centennial (Fredrik Backman on Creative Anxiety and Procrastination)

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baileyes's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful lighthearted reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

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sandysmith's review against another edition

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emotional funny hopeful inspiring lighthearted reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

I do like a Fredrik Backman book. Britt-Marie has Ove like tendencies. She has OCD, cleans as a coping mechanism, and says what's on her mind, and she has no filter. She is a 63 year old who unexpectedly moves to Borg, a small village where she is the caretaker for the community centre, that is scheduled to be demolished. She becomes the children's football coach. Another one that creeps up on you makes you think, thought provoking funny, sad and is unbelievably wholesome. Great stuff

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bookish_slagathor's review against another edition

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emotional funny inspiring reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

This book gave me some serious emotional whiplash.

One chapter I was smiling, next I was bawling my eyes out, confusing the hell out of my fiancée and my cats.

This was my first venture into Backman’s books and I can already feel that I will have a wonderfully toxic relationship with his books where he makes me smile, laugh, promising a wonderful but somewhat bittersweet time and then unexpectedly stabs me in the heart repeatedly.

And I will keep coming back, wanting more.

Backman’s prose is truly something else. I can’t say if this is true of him in general, so anyone who has read several of his works feel free to add your two Swedish kronas, but he takes mundane people and pretty depressing concepts and uses utterly absurd humor to make it seem less… well, depressing as hell.

The only reason why I didn’t give it five stars is the somewhat open ending, which in general I am not a fan of.

Still, definitely a book I would wholeheartedly recommend to anyone okay with being hurt by words.

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