Fredrik Backman's novel, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry, is the story of relationships and devotion. This guide is based on the Amazon Kindle version of the book.

Elsa is a seven-year-old girl who has only one friend – her Granny. Granny is not an ordinary grandmother. She smokes and curses, and she shows Elsa how to reach the magical land of fairy tales by going to sleep in Granny's wardrobe. When Elsa's parents divorce and Elsa finds herself afraid of many things, Granny takes her to The Land-of-Almost-Awake. Together, they reach land by riding cloud animals. The land is extensive with multiple parkingdoms and many stories. Elsa learns to put the stories to use in her everyday life and later realizes that the stories are all “nicked” from other stories and from real life situations in Granny's past.

Granny spends time in the hospital, and Elsa overhears a conversation about Granny having cancer. Elsa hardly has time to process the information before Granny dies peacefully in the hospital with Elsa at her side. Over the coming days, Elsa discovers that life is even more difficult without her only friend before learning that she has other friends available.

Elsa struggles in school. She is bullied, but she also becomes embroiled in fights because she refuses to back down from her ideals. To make matters more difficult, she does not have any close friends her own age. When she is in trouble, Granny always stands up for her. Elsa never expects her mother to take her side; but, after Granny's death, her mother does stand up for Elsa.

Elsa thinks she knows the identities of all the people who live in her apartment building. After Granny's death, Elsa discovers that she is supposed to deliver a letter to a man who frightens her. She soon learns that he is not scary and that he has a past that is deeper than she could have imagined. She follows her Granny's trail of letters, each apologizing for some past action, with the hope that the final letter will be an apology to Elsa's mother, Ulrika. Granny was a doctor and was seldom home to care for Ulrika, a fact that has colored their entire relationship.

As she follows Granny's clues, she learns that the controlling neighbor, Britt-Marie, is really struggling with a horrible childhood and a failing marriage. Britt-Marie's husband, Kent, is always pretending to be rushing off to work. However, he is really spending time with his mistress. The taxi driver, Alf, is Kent's estranged brother. The young boy who has a syndrome and his mother are hiding from an abusive husband and father, Sam. Lennart and Maud, Sam's parents, are the nice couple who always have cookies and coffee. The large, scary man is a veteran who cannot live with the things he has seen in life. The busy young woman is also the woman who gets drunk nightly in an effort to deal with the deaths of her husband and sons. Elsa discovers that her Granny helped many of these people in one way or another and that they are all willing to help Elsa when it matters most.

When her half-brother is born, Elsa comes to terms with her parents' divorce and the new relationships that have formed because of it. She also develops a circle of friends at school, and they never again have to run away from the bullies who do not like people who are different. Elsa learns that Granny has put a great deal of responsibility in her hands by giving Elsa the apartment building where they all live, meaning Elsa will have to make the decision about the future ownership of the building.