We simply loved ‘A Man Called Ove’ by Fredrik Backman and we were quite thrilled to run into his other works. But ‘Britt-Marie Was Here’, his latest book, fell short of our expectations, although that doesn’t mean we are not going to read Backman’s work ever again. It’s just that the bar was set high because of his debut novel and Britt-Marie, though charming in her own weird ways, fails to impress you as much as Ove. We meet Britt-Marie, a 63-year-old woman, who can and does, at times, come across as “a bloody nag-bag” especially when she insists people take off their dirty jerseys so she can wash them when they don’t have a change of clothes or not walk into a store with muddy shoes because she has just mopped the floor. But you soon find out that’s just her way of trying to manage her slowly spiraling out of control life. She’s stoically controlling the little things she can manage, like the way cutlery is arranged in the drawers to using coasters, just to put back some semblance of order in her life.
For four decades, her husband has ruled their lives as she spent her time folding his clothes and raising his kids though they never accepted her as their mother. Then she receives news that her husband has had a heart attack, from his mistress, and she leaves him and her orderly home behind and lands up in a (fictional) town called Borg. At Borg, she meets a horde of characters, from ‘Somebody’, who runs the only pizzeria there and Sven, the only policeman in town who is smitten by Britt-Marie from Day One, to Vega, Omar and their elder brother Sami, who has a criminal past, and Ben (nicknamed Pirate) who makes Britt-Marie style his hair despite hers being straight-cut and basic.
Though nothing stands out in the book, the charm of reading lies in getting to know Britt-Marie and the people of Borg. Britt-Marie forces us to look at ourselves as she deals with the cracks in her life (that could have easily been in ours too). You see the chinks in her armor and learn how to fix yours. The thing with Swedish blogger, columnist and author Backman’s work is that he knows his characters and crafts them really well. Also, his characters are always quirky and thus quite unforgettable. First there was Ove in A Man Called Ove, then Elsa’s Gran in ‘My Grandmother Sends Her Regards and Apologies’ and, now, we have Britt-Marie. And though Britt-Marie might not be the most memorable of them all, you are also not likely to forget her anytime soon.
BRITT-MARIE WAS HERE
Author: Fredrik Backman
Genre: Fiction
Published: 2017 (Reprint edition) Publisher: Washington Square Press
Language: English
Pages: 336, paperback
