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Book Review of Britt-Marie Was Here

Britt-Marie Was Here
plum-marie avatar reviewed on + 117 more book reviews


I think I liked Ove better but this one was good too. One of the skills of the author in my opinion is writing characters you can picture, people with details about their lives without getting bogged down in it, so that you feel you live with them for a time.

At its heart Britt-Marie is about a person who has been living for someone else for so long she almost doesn't know herself. About an unlikely town and group of people who help her see what she wants from life. The story is about the desire in all of us as humans to be noticed and seen.

Chapter 29 had me literally shaking with laughter, I have no idea if that was the late hour at which I was finishing the book or just the way Britt-Marie is you just laugh sometimes. The sections with both Kent and Sven are pretty funny too. I waited the whole book to find out Somebody's name and am impressed that it really works to have her called Somebody when Britt-Marie is telling the story. I'm not sure it is really clear what becomes of Britt-Marie's life but you discover how she changed the course of the lives in Borg and that is more what the story is about anyway-the effect a person can have.