Book Review: My Friends
Here’s my review of My Friends by Fredrik Backman. Don’t forget to leave a comment if you’ve read it too, or if you plan to read it. Then see today’s writing prompt at the bottom of this post.
My Friends by Fredrik Backman is one of those books that will make you laugh, cry, and think deeply about the human condition and the world, all at once. So, of course, I adored it. Backman has a knack for writing characters into existence who are so authentically beautiful and vulnerable that it becomes nearly impossible to believe they aren’t real. Each character in this novel will tug at your heart strings and make you laugh out loud as their individual stories unfold and overlap.
While the characters in the novel are brought to life via their engaging and hilarious banter and dialogue, as well as their complex personal histories and idiosyncrasies, it should also be mentioned that this novel includes a few compelling mysteries that will keep you turning pages. Readers won’t be able to resist learning more about the world-famous painting a world-famous artist painted one summer when he was still a child, everything that happened that summer he painted that painting due to his friends’ encouragement and insistence, as well as much of what happened after that vital summer.
Readers will also be entranced by the friend who tells the story of the world-famous painting to a new and unexpected friend he makes along the way, and all the new misadventures they have together with the painting twenty-five years later. Especially because the friend tells the story in a captivating way that is reminiscent of traditional storytelling.
Last but not least, I thoroughly enjoyed how this book explores important questions such as: What is art? What is love? What is death and life? And what is friendship? And how beautifully precarious yet solid they all are, once you have experienced them. However, Backman and his characters take their time unraveling such questions and never force the reader to determine or single out only one ‘correct’ answer to any of them, which I was grateful for as a reader.
Fair warning: there are mentions of death and violence and domestic abuse and addiction in this book. Yet somehow, Backman manages to write about these topics in the most deeply humane and hopeful way possible.
Overall, I would recommend this book to those readers who enjoy deeper, more thoughtful reads that also contain equal amounts of humor and levity and adventure and mystery. If you enjoyed any of Backman’s previous books, you would certainly enjoy this one too, though this one is likely his best one yet.
Here are some notable excerpts from the book (There are so many others not included here!):
“Art is empathy.” (p.13)
“Imagination is a child’s only weapon.” (p.14)
“Because in an ugly place, he was born with so much beauty inside him that it was like an act of rebellion. In a world full of sledgehammers, his art was a declaration of war.” (p. 20)
“In life we might be enemies, but when faced with death, we see the truth: we are one species, all we have is each other, and where you go, I shall follow.” (p.54)
“They have never met, but it doesn’t matter. Art teaches us to mourn for strangers.” (p.58)
“Nothing weighs more than someone else’s belief in you.” (p.67)
“Adults often think that self-confidence is something a child learns, but little kids are by their nature always invincible, it’s self-doubt that needs to be taught. And oh, how the artist was taught, because the world has spent thousands of years practicing how to puncture the lungs of children who are different.” (p.79)
“As an adult, the artist would be told that great artistry is something that has to find its way out of a person, but for him it was something that needed to find its way in. Because for him, art was love. Grief. A story.” (p.96)
“My art is only an investment now, everyone who owns a piece of me hopes I’ll die, because nothing is more valuable at auction than an unfulfilled life.” (p.111)
“You can be whatever you want to in life, as long as you don’t become a critic! Not of other people, and not of yourself. It’s so easy to be a critic, any coward can do that. But art doesn’t need critics, art has enough enemies already. Art needs friends.” (p.194)
“Art is what we leave of ourselves in other people.” (p.211)
“The world is full of miracles, but none greater than how far a young person can be carried by someone else’s belief in them.” (p.361)
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Today’s Writing Prompt
Writing Prompt: The Pier
Write a scene that takes place on a pier.
Writing Tip
Before you start writing, consider: Are there people and or animals in this scene? Who? What? Why? Where are they, and what season is it?
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I loved this book also and I have been recommending it like crazy. I too plan to write about the effect it had on me at some point. I found it akin to A Little Life in some ways. I am wondering if you felt that too?