This book was recommended to me by, of all people, my grandmother. She's not generally in the habit of recommending books to me, so I immediately grabbed it on audiobook. The narrator is fabulous; I'm especially obsessed with her delivery of Britt-Marie's lines, which really capture her neuroticism. The story follows 7-year-old Elsa, whose grandmother, an amazing teller of fairy tales, dies and leaves her to deliver a series of apology letters to the residents of their building. As the present-day story unfolds, the tangled web of backstories and relationships among the characters is slowly revealed, as well as the real people's connections to the stories Elsa's granny told. The writing is both beautiful in its cadence and uniquely frank, often funny. Elsa's frequent bluntness with the adults around her is both charming and hilarious. The story has empathy for even its most horrible characters and shows all the ways people can be "both shits and not shits" at the same time. I laughed; I cried; I am so glad my grandmother (who is absolutely nothing like the grandmother in the book but is wonderful in her own way) suggested this to me.

Also I just need to scream about how AMAZING AND PERFECT AND BADASS the line "We do not beat people to death in this leaseholders' association" is.