MY FRIENDS

By Fredrik Backman

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (Goodreads: 4.42)

GENRE: Contemporary Fiction

PART OF A SERIES? No

WORTH READING? Yes

SUMMARY:

Fredrik Backman's My Friends tells the story of friendship, art, and the connections that shape our lives.

The narrative follows two timelines. In the present day, we meet Louisa, a young woman on the verge of adulthood who suddenly has in her custody a mysterious painting that has captivated her for years. Determined to understand its origins, she sets out on a journey that will reveal surprising truths.

The second timeline takes us back twenty-five years to a group of teenagers, including Ted, the second other main character. These young people, each dealing with their own struggles, form a deep bond during one transformative summer. Their story becomes intertwined with the painting that will later spark the modern-day quest.

Written in Backman's signature style, the novel explores how art can connect strangers across time, how friendships sustain us through hardship, and how the bonds we form can echo through decades. It's a story about found families, resilience and the power of human connection.

Opening lines: “Louisa is a teenager, the best kind of human.”

Masterful storyteller Fredrik Backman sucked me into My Friends right from the very first page. I’d be surprised if I made it five pages before caring about the characters.

Backman skilfully weaves humour and sorrow into every story he tells. And I don’t think there’s an author on this planet who can write friendship as well as he can.

The way Fredrik Backman identifies aspects of life always surprises me. In My Friends once again offers his trademark keen observations about the human condition.

I often think Backman must be the wittiest father, husband and friend to have in your life. He thinks of so many things that would never have occurred to me.

Take, for instance, the moment when a wealthy woman complains that a painting doesn’t have enough orange in it. She says it in such a way that “suggests she is also irritated that ice cream isn’t more like pickles, or that doorknobs aren’t more like opera.”

An old man is wagging his index finger at Louisa. “It turns out, to his horror, that Louisa isn’t at all afraid of index fingers, because she isn’t an elevator button…”

Every Backman has so many nuggets of gold writing, it’s sometimes impossible to pick. But here are some examples.

Ted is “…angry at himself, angry at the artist, and most of all angry at death for having such good taste. Always taking the best first.”

Louisa’s friend, Fish, took her own life. But Louisa sees that as a lie told by adults. For Louisa knows the real reason Fish died… “She was murdered by reality… suffocated by the claustrophobia of being trapped on this planet…”

Fredrik Backman stories kill me every time. So don’t read this if you don’t want to fall in a big, blubbering book slump!

In case it’s not obvious from the below list, Fredrik Backman is one of my absolute favourite authors. If I were ever marooned on an island, his books are the ones I’d want beside me — so that I could become lost in the special worlds he creates.

My Friends is one of Fredrik Backman's best books if you loved Beartown.

Click here to buy My Friends  

If you’d like to try any of these other fabulous books by Fredrik Backman…

Beartown  (which needs to be read before Us Against You  and The Winners)

Click here for A Man Called Ove (aka Otto)

Click here for Anxious People 

Click here for Britt-Marie Was Here 

Click here for My Grandmother Sends Her Regards and Apologises 

Click here for And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer 

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