The Little Old Lady Who Broke All the Rules

Digital audiobook read by Patience Tomlinson.

Martha Andersson is 79 years old and lives in a retirement home. But she isn’t happy with the realities of the situation. When new management takes over, corners are cut, and the promised amenities are no longer evident. Martha and her friends – Brains, Rake, Christina and Anna-Greta – are not going to take this lying down. They form the League of Pensioners and decide the best way to improve their circumstances is to engage in some nonviolent crime.

These characters are a hoot! As outlandish and ridiculous as many of their schemes are, I found it great fun to watch them unfold. Of course, things don’t always go as planned (how many times can those paintings be stolen?), but it would show more be a short book if it all went right the first time. Martha and her “gang” are a resourceful bunch, and who on earth would suspect a little old lady with a walker of being a master criminal? Does make you think twice about discounting the senior citizens in our lives. There may be snow on the roof, but there’s a fire inside.

I did get more than a little tired of Nurse Barbara and her schemes to get her married lover to leave his wife and marry her instead. Enough already. Still, it was an enjoyable adventure.

This is the first in a series. Wonder what the League of Pensioners will get up to next?

Patience Tomlinson does a fine job narrating the audiobook. She sets a good pace and manages to give the characters sufficiently unique voices so that I didn’t get confused about who was speaking. show less

The Lily of the Valley retirement home was once a haven for Martha Anderson and her friends, but now under new management, and renamed Diamond House, the group had become victims of rate rises and repeated service cuts. Management’s decision to not provide decorations for the Christmas tree is the last straw for Martha who, after watching a television documentary, decides they would all be better off in a prison cell than as clients of Diamond House. Escaping the home is just the first step of a masterful scheme that includes the ‘League of Pensioners’ living the high life in Stockholm’s most exclusive hotel, a trip to the national art museum and a relaxing stay in a minimum security institution…but not everything goes to show more plan.

I can’t help but draw some comparisons between The Little Old Lady Who Broke All The Rules and The One Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared by author, Jonas Jonasson, the two books share a similar cover design, title, a ‘senior’ protagonist and both author’s are Swedish to begin with, but in truth there are few similarities.

While Allan Karlsson’s only plan is to escape his centenarian celebrations at the care home, Martha and her gang make meticulous plans for their break out and subsequent adventures with a clear goal in mind. The plot is largely straightforward with their initial schemes escalating when things don’t go exactly to plan. And things go wrong – a wild storm, a curious Yugoslav Mafia member and an ambitious hotel housekeeper, all add excitement and a touch of danger to the pensioners enterprise.

Ingelman-Sundberg plays it straight where Jonasson comedic sense wanders into the absurd. There is humor of course in a group of old age pensioners rebellion against society’s ‘rules’, the care home’s restrictions and their crime spree, certainly enough to raise a chuckle or three.

Commentary on the marginalisation of the elderly and their vulnerability to the power of care institutions, more concerned with profit margins than the well-being of their clientele, is inevitable though tempered by the idea of ‘growing old disgracefully’. You can’t help but admire the group’s sense of fun and mischief.

I read the English translation of the novel which I think was well done. I did find the pace a little uneven and thought perhaps overall the novel was a little too long.

I did enjoy The Little Old Lady Who Broke All The Rules, it’s an entertaining, feel good crime caper which will have you cheering for the elderly rebels on the wrong side of the law. show less

A great premise: a group of older people in an assisted living facility become frustrated with their living conditions and embark on various activities to emancipate themselves. Sadly, the writing is unable to live up to the premise, though I read a translated version, which could have contributed to the confusion. Much like hanging out in a residential facility, I found myself dozing off without warning.

The first paragraph from chapter one:
"The next day, while the guests, or the 'clients,' as they were now called, at Diamond House were drinking their morning coffee in the lounge. Martha thought about what she should do. In her childhood home in Österlen, down in the south off Sweden, people didn't just sit and wait for somebody else show more to take action. If the hay must be put in the barn, or a mare was going to foal, then you simply pitched in and did what was necessary. Martha looked at her hands. She was proud of them--they were reliable hands, and showed that she had done her fair share of hard work. The murmur of voices rose and fell all around her as she surveyed the rather shabby lounge. The smell was decidedly reminiscent of the Salvation Army and the furniture seemed to have come straight from the recycling depot. The old gray 1940s building, with its asbestos fiber cement cladding, was like a combination of an old school and a dentist's waiting room. Surely this wasn't where she was meant to end her days, with a mug of weak instant coffee to go with a plastic meal? No, damn it, it certainly was not! Martha breathed deeply, pushed her coffee mug aside and leaned forward to speak to her group of friends."

If you are still awake and appreciated the exact description of Martha's moment of reflection and the building she is in, you should read on! This is the book for you. If you think that you would like a little less description and a little more action, then you may want to skip ahead to page 69 when the 'League of Pensioners' put their first crime into action. As they are the most incompetent thieves ever, I got stuck trying to understand which parts were supposed to be ironic and/or funny. Or was this genuine, and elderly Swedish people are incapable of simple logic, and the surrounding 'normal-aged' people incapable of recognizing subterfuge?

And confusion, I confess, continued, because Sweden is pretty close to socially perfect, so why are they being so awful to their old people? The administrators lock the 'clients' up at night, and then (mild spoiler) the staff decides to mildly drug them to keep them compliant. What?!? I felt like this must be set in the 1960s--surely Swedes don't run around drugging people? Is this the secret to a compliant society? We haven't been allowed to do that in America for years and years, despite millions of oxycodone prescriptions. I truly don't understand; was I supposed to laugh that their robbery plans were so incompetent as to not include the lights going out? Or that Nurse Katia isn't concerned there's no notes regarding the absence of five residents? This seems so strange to me.

There's some sort of sub-plot about the awful administrator at the facility having an affair with one of the staff, and the declining conditions at the facility. Maybe the hook is that the book is hyper 'realistic' in description and scenarios--with the exception of the elderly shenanigans. But the writing ended up killing it. It feels like a basic reading level in vocabulary and thought process, as the above paragraph shows. A third person point of view often means that it is just narrated from different perspectives, not that much insight is offered. First this happens, then that happens, and then that. Pacing is terribly slow, with paragraphs of description of both setting and Martha's crew making plot points even further apart. I ended up with a terminal loss of interest around page 95. In fact, I'm falling asleep writing this. Not recommended for listening while driving. show less

As I've mentioned before, I have a fondness for heist tales, be it book or movie. Well, Catharina Ingelman-Sundberg has come out with a fun caper story, with a twist - The Little Old Lady Who Broke All the Rules.

Seventy nine old Martha and her four friends reside at the Diamond Retirement Home in Sweden. The administrators running the home have slowly but surely eroded the seniors' enjoyment of life, through tasteless meals, strict rules, rising costs and worse. They're bored. Surely even prisoners are treated better than they are!

Hang on....what if? You can see it coming, can't you.....

Martha and her newly formed League of Pensioners gang come up with a plan. They'll commit robberies and have themselves sent to prison. Surely show more they'll be treated better there! And a little bit of extra cash wouldn't go amiss either.

And half the fun is in the planning. Who is going to suspect five old folks with walkers? Well, it turns out they have a knack for crime, although their plans don't always execute quite the way they intended..

What I really enjoyed were the seniors themselves, their thoughts, interactions and desire to live an interesting, full, rich life despite their advancing age. I think older people are discounted far too often. Ingleman-Sundberg's take on her seniors' lives has a large dose of truth woven throughout. Her imaginings of what they might do to change their circumstances were really quite entertaining. For me, not quite the laugh out loud funny mentioned on the cover blurbs, but definitely charming. You'll be cheering for the 'gang'.

Being a crime fiction fanatic, I had to stop myself from picking apart plot points that were a bit far-fetched in places and just go with the story. Although, I can see this being made into a movie - and it would be fun to cast. There seem to be a lot of 'feisty old folks' films being produced lately.

The Little Old Lady Who Broke All the Rules is a bestseller in Sweden (1.2 million copies sold!). I found the translation to English a bit wooden in spots and some references may have been 'lost in translation. If you enjoyed The 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed Out Window and Disappeared, you might enjoy this book. show less

I heard of this book from a friend, who posted a very negative review of it on her blog. Given my masochistic approach to books and the fact that the plot sounded like it could be really fun, I figured I should give it a try, that it might be fun even if it wasn't good.

No such luck.

First of all it's badly written. The author has absolutely no idea how to use paragraphs, and they can go on for pages with different actions and thoughts being mixed up in a way that just doesn't flow very well when you read it. Knowledge is usually imparted through dialogue, which is usually not a good idea unless maybe you're Dan Brown. And then there's the part where she tends to overinform us, the readers, of the plot, and repeat stuff that happened just show more a few pages earlier. It gets tiresome to get treated like you're an idiot by the author.

Secondly, while I don't mind a few improbable events in books, most of the plot in this one relies on everyone carrying around an idiot ball and letting the main characters get away with too much shit. Someone overlooking an incident once or twice and having that work out well for your characters is one thing, but when the entire plot hinges on the police not being able to do their job even when evidence is right in front of them? Then it's just annoying.

Thirdly, all of the characters are brutal stereotypes and that's just annoying as well.

Very disappointed in this book, even if the premise was kinda fun. It just took everything too far for me to enjoy it. show less

It’s Martha Anderson’s dream to escape her retirement home . . . and to rob a bank. She’s determined to do this to fund an exciting life for herself. Recruiting her four oldest friends, they decide to rebel against the rules and stage a protest against early bedtimes and inedible meals. The group, calling themselves the League of Pensioners, decides to break out of the retirement home and have an adventure . . . .

Age should have no bearing on how people are treated. But at Diamond House, the new owner has cut back on all the amenities, giving Martha and her friends the completely implausible idea to become criminals. It’s difficult to imagine that the living conditions in a retirement home are so draconian that prison seems to show more be a better place to live. The characters are mostly unlikeable and it isn’t even vaguely humorous to have this group of senior citizens setting out on a crime spree. Stereotypical bumbling police officers don’t add anything to this nonsensical tale in which the League of Pensioners comes off as selfish and mean-spirited and no one thinks to stand up and say what they’re doing is wrong.

Perhaps it’s the translation [?], but there’s no empathy between character and reader in this trite tale that’s likely to leave readers saying, “Meh.” show less

Bailing at 20%. Based on the reviews of others, this may be a case of being lost in translation. I'm just so horribly bored. The one part I found really funny is when the MC talks about how she wanted her friends group to buy an old mansion with a moat for their retirement. That way, when the police or family members came to pester them, they could just lift the drawbridge.