the only two noticeable things in Borg are soccer and the pizzeria, because these tend to be the last things to abandon humanity.” The recreation center certainly seems abandoned, and Britt-Marie at once sets to cleaning it. When she arrives at the recreation center, she sees a group of unkempt kids playing soccer in the parking lot.

She applies for a job at the unemployment office, and is sent to the nearby tiny town of Borg, one of those small, run-down places where “trucks home to, but nowadays they only drive past.” Britt-Marie gets a temporary job running the recreation center “that has admittedly not been closed down, but only because they haven’t had time to do it yet.” It is next to a pizzeria (which also doubles as the town pub, the town grocery store, and the town post office). But finally, after Britt-Marie receives news of Kent having a (non-lethal) heart attack that is delivered to her by his mistress, she overcomes her fear and loathing of spontaneity, and she leaves.

For forty years, she has let her husband Kent run their lives, raising his children the best she could even though they never accepted her worrying about what other people would think and trying to conduct herself accordingly. Britt-Marie is introduced to us as a 63-year-old woman who is a bit of a fussbudget indeed, at times “a bloody nag-bag,” who manages living with circumstances she cannot control by trying to exert control over the things she can: the arrangement of cutlery in a drawer keeping things clean using coasters. But she will learn that life may have more to offer her that she's ever realised, and love might be found in the most unexpected of places. So when Britt-Marie finds herself unemployed, separated from her husband of 20 years, left to fend for herself in the miserable provincial backwater that is Borg - of which the kindest thing one can say is that it has a road going through it - and somehow tasked with running the local football team, she is a little unprepared. We're not animals, are we?īut behind the passive-aggressive, socially awkward, absurdly pedantic busybody is a woman who has more imagination, bigger dreams and a warmer heart than anyone around her realizes.

A cutlery drawer should be arranged in the right order, for example (forks, knives, then spoons). It's not that she's judgemental, or fussy, or difficult - she just expects things to be done in a certain way. The number one bestseller: a funny, poignant and uplifting tale of love, community, and second chancesįor as long as anyone can remember, Britt-Marie has been an acquired taste. Click here to purchase from Rakuten Kobo FROM THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF A MAN CALLED OVE, NOW A MAJOR FILM STARRING TOM HANKS

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