Britt-Marie Was Here: an audiobook review

Author- Fredrik Backman

Translator- Henning Koch

Narrator- Joan Walker

It was fantastic to walk in the park while Britt-Marie was playing in my headphones. I was speeding up my pace while the 63 years old woman was gearing up with a new momentum in her life. Backman portrays her protagonist in a way, you gonna love them on the very first sight maybe. Britt-Marie was my absolute favorite! Why? You don't ask me why! Just read it. You'll struggle too to review why you like it. You just loved it, you felt the pain, the tension, hope made you believe in good days and you carried on. You were on your commute to work, thinking Britt-Marie was here with you, you did Crossword in the Daily like Britt-Marie would do,  you ironed the clothes and it was Britt-Marie who nudged you to iron the crisp shirts and put them in a neat pile. You just absolutely love this 63 year old woman, who is no sugar-and-calorie. And you absolutely don't know why you love her.

Britt-Marie moves to a town called Borg where she looks for a job, so that she doesn’t die alone and leave unpleasant smells of the dead for her neighbors. But Borg is a town where everything is closing down. Once it might have been an opening for every good thing. But now houses put a “On Sale” sign, people look out for jobs in other places. Nonetheless Britt-Marie gets herself a job and leaves a mark in Borg while she gets some from the place.

Bicarbonate of soda is her favorite thing and cleaning is her favorite activity. Britt-Marie meets Bank, so do we. She meets “somebody”, meets the children at the recreation center- Toad, Dino, other kids with no real name and Oma and Vega. She meets a mob whose kitchen drawer is organized properly, like knives and forks have the perfect order, not at all like “barbarians”, how on the earth the person can be a mob she doesn’t understand. Nor do we!

And she meets fans of every football club. A Liverpool fan, a Tottenham fan, even a fan of Aston Villa. And there her husband “Kent is an entrepreneur” sitting in his BMW, Manchester United fan (how I finished the sentence without using an f-word I don’t know)

Backman was a pure magician with this book. He would name his characters as a fan of a club, “the girl at the recreation center”, simply name the suited men as “suit”. The writing style is a pure Backman and I found the same style in his later novels as well. Don’t worry it doesn’t get boring at all. With Britt-Marie, I have finished reading/listening to all of Backman till now (Anxious People is currently his latest release). A big kudos to the audiobook narrator Joan Walker for the unique, hilarious accent for all the characters. I loved how Bank and Somebody sound.

Now, time to goodbye Britt-Marie. Under the last glow of sunlight, when I was orbiting the park’s center in big circles with other regulars, Britt-Marie was there… with us.