Britt-Marie Was Here

Britt-Marie Was Here Audiobook

The audience will not get the gesture initially that the novel is about second chances but it actually is about second chances. Britt-Marie is the ideal kind of woman whom Fredrik Backman describes at the start of the novel. She is the kind of woman who likes everything settled in the perfect manner and she does not like sluggishness in her life. Getting up late in the morning is something that she cannot even think of.

Then there is a group that thinks that Marie is an aggressor and she criticizes a lot but that is not true because the woman always talks about the right thing without having any grudge in her heart. Though she lived her life perfectly this perfection has not allowed her to make any friends. After spending forty years with her husband, she thinks that their relationship is nothing and they should not live with each other. At the age of sixty three, Marie decides to start a new life and she comes to a new town where people are not according to her expectations.

The children are quite noisy here and they just don’t care about any kind of cleanliness. More than that, everyone in the town loves soccer which is the oddest of things for Marie. Joan Walker narrates how the local team starts looking for a soccer coach. When no one is found, the children make a request to Marie who agrees because for the first time she feels that she is important to someone or something.

The old lady also finds love in the process and life does bring a second chance for her like in Us Against You and Us Against You. At such an age people usually start living a passive life and this brings pessimism. Marie keeps on going with the flow and finds a new purpose in life in the end.