My Friends by Fredrik Backman
A heart-warming, heart-breaking gem that shines with wisdom, compassion and humor.
Best-selling author Frederik Backman’s latest novel, My Friends, is a heart-warming, heart-breaking gem that shines with wisdom, compassion and humor, illuminating the immeasurable power of friendship.
In an unnamed seaside town in an unnamed country, where hope and aspiration come in short supply, an artist and his three friends save each other over a difficult yet unforgettable summer as the friends push the artist to paint his greatest achievement. In Backman’s words, “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.”
Twenty-five years later, another young artist connects in unpredictable ways with the friendships that have prevailed and the art that endured.
A Painting That Transcends Time
The novel alternates in time between a summer when his three friends convince the artist to submit his first painting to an art competition and 25 years later, when the painting has become one of the world’s most famous.
The story starts in the present, at an auction of “ridiculously expensive art.” Seventeen-year-old Louisa, who’s just lost her best friend to addiction, is about to get thrown out for getting too close to a valuable painting. There is cause for alarm: the painting is world-famous, and the cans of spray paint in her backpack incriminate her.
But for Louisa, the painting — of three tiny figures sitting at the end of a pier on a wide expanse of sea — is “her happiest place.” A fortuitous meeting and Louisa’s prescient survival skills facilitate her otherwise improbable connection to the painting and to the friendships that engendered it.
Childhood Friendships Forged in Fire
The artist and his three friends endure turbulent and sometimes violent childhoods, beset daily with verbal and physical abuse, emotional pain and no chance for relief. Inevitable as it feels, their struggle is hard to witness.
“Hardly anyone could afford to move away … so around here young men didn’t feel that they’d chosen a life, just that they had been allocated one.”
School is no better, often spent in hiding because they attend “a school of predators where everything was always a countdown to being chased.”
Joar, “the biggest and bravest of the three,” does battle for those he loves. All he wants is “for his mom to be safe and for the artist to have a big life.” Ted comes from a family life only slightly more loving than the others. He is sentimental to the core, wishing he could “stop time. So my mom would never lose my dad, so Joar wouldn’t get beaten by his old man … so I would never run out of people.” Ali arrives last, when they all turn 14, sharing the same troubled background as the rest.
Over Two Decades of Unwavering Friendship
While some describe the artist as “an impoverished little nothing from a run-down harbor town with divorced parents,” his friends — and Louisa — see something far different. With eyes “full to bursting with childish curiosity,” he exemplifies for them a world they dream about.
As Backman observes, “Children have two worlds, the one they have been given and the one they can dream about.” The artist’s friends view his talent as a way for at least one of them to escape their difficult lives. In return, the artist can’t imagine disappointing them.
The summer they all turn 14, the four show up for each other daily, no matter what, and in every way that counts. Their mere presence, whether in crisis or simply showing up at the assigned meeting place every day, means everything.
The same refusal to abandon each other persists 25 years later. Louisa points out how their ties have not wavered and shares with Ted a similar sentiment about losing her best friend. “Every day may not have been the best day, but with Fish at least you knew the day had a chance.”
A Story That’s Sure to Touch Your Heart
My Friends leaves us with the evocative image of childhood friends sitting together on a pier on a summer day. We wistfully agree with the author that “everyone should be allowed to be 14 for far longer than a year,” and with the artist: “at the end of his life he only wished for what almost all of us wish for: to have our childhood summers back.”
Friendship at its best makes us see — and want to become — the best version of ourselves and to remember the best moments of our lives. When it comes to love, or art, or life, “no one can stop you loving whatever you like, the cynics and critics can have control of all the other crap on the planet … but they can’t decide how hard your heart beats.”
Your heart will beat hard for characters who wear their hearts on their sleeves, and for a book that makes it impossible to imagine a life without your best friends.
About Fredrik Backman:
Fredrik Backman is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Man Called Ove, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry, Britt-Marie Was Here, Beartown, Us Against You, Anxious People, The Winners and My Friends, as well as two novellas and one work of nonfiction. His books are published in more than 40 countries. He lives in Stockholm, Sweden, with his wife and two children. Connect with him on Facebook and Twitter @BackmanLand or on Instagram @Backmansk.
Publish Date: 5/6/2025
Genre: Fiction
Author: Fredrik Backman
Page Count: 448 pages
Publisher: Atria Books
ISBN: 9781982112820