Some books you read fast, just to find out what happens. And some books you force yourself to slow down for, because you already know you’ll miss them once they’re over. My Friends was the second kind for me.
I came in with high expectations Backman has this way of writing that seems simple until you realize a sentence just hit you without warning. And this book is no exception, except this time the tone leans more melancholic than the more obvious humor of A Man Called Ove or Anxious People.
The story, no spoilers
The book moves between two timelines. In the present, we meet Louisa: a girl about to turn 18, who grew up moving through foster homes and is grieving the best friend she lost along the way. The only thing of value she carries is a postcard with a reproduction of a famous painting the first thing she ever stole, and also the first beautiful thing she ever really had. An unexpected encounter brings her to Ted, a close friend of the artist who painted that piece, and the two set off on a trip to the coastal town where it all began.
On the other side, we go back twenty-five years, to a summer in a rough port town, where four teenagers Ted, Ali, Joar, and C. Jat met every day on the pier. That’s the summer that gives birth to the painting that, decades later, will tie both stories together.
What hit me the most
What stays with me after closing this book isn’t really the plot it’s the feeling. Backman builds the friendship between the four boys with so much small, specific detail that when things start to hurt for them, it hurts for me too. It’s not a loud kind of pain; it’s more the feeling of recognizing a friendship from your own life on a fictional page.
And there’s this thread about art that I loved: for the four friends, and later for Louisa herself, making something a painting, graffiti on a wall becomes a way to survive the hardest parts of life. It’s not just a book about friendship. It’s a book about how a piece of art can carry an entire story inside it, even when no one else knows it’s there.
What didn’t quite work for me
Being honest: there were parts where Louisa felt less like a person and more like a device for Backman to say what he wanted to say about grief and art. It didn’t pull me out of the book, but I noticed it.
Would I recommend it?
If you already like Backman, this book will confirm exactly why. If you’ve never read anything by him, it might help to go in knowing the pace is slow and that the author has zero fear of being sentimental this is him being fully himself, just in a sadder key.
I closed the book with this ache for people who don’t even exist. And I think that’s exactly what Backman was going for: a reminder that the friends we make at certain points in our lives leave a mark even decades later, even when we no longer know where they ended up.
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