Author: Fredrik Backman
Translator: Neil Smith
Publisher: Atria Books
Genre: Literary Fiction
Format: Audiobook
Narrator: Marin Ireland
Length: 13 hrs 22 mins
No. of Pages: 436
Date of Publication: May 6, 2025
My Rating: 5 Stars
DESCRIPTION:
Most people don’t even notice them—three tiny figures sitting at the end of a long pier in the corner of one of the most famous paintings in the world. Most people think it’s just a depiction of the sea. But Louisa, an artist herself, knows otherwise and she is determined to find out the story of these three enigmatic figures.
Twenty-five years earlier, in a distant town, a group of teenagers find refuge from their difficult home lives by spending their days laughing and telling stories out on a pier. There’s Joar, who never backs down from a fight; quiet and bookish Ted who is mourning his father; Ali, the daughter of a man who never stays in one place for long; and finally, there’s the artist, a boy who hoards sleeping pills and shuns attention, but who possesses an extraordinary gift that might be his ticket to a better life. These four lost souls find in each other a reason to get up each morning, a reason to dream.
Out of that summer emerges a transcendent work of art, a painting that will unexpectedly be put into eighteen-year-old Louisa’s care. As she struggles to decide what to do with this bequest, she embarks on a surprise-filled cross-country journey to learn the story of how the painting came to be. The closer she gets to the painting’s birthplace, the more she feels compelled to unleash her own artistic spirit, but happy endings don’t always take the form we expect in this fresh testament to the transformative power of friendship and art.
MY THOUGHTS:
I knew when I started the Beartown trilogy that I'd want to read everything Backman has written. I finished the trilogy last month, and got to My Friends just last week. What a tender, heartbreaking story. It's told across two timelines: the friendship of four teenagers in the past, and the unlikely bond between Louisa and Ted in the present. This is one of the more emotional books I've read, tragedy woven through nearly every page.
At the center is one of the world's most famous paintings, which pulls Louisa and Ted together - no matter how hard he tries to shake her off. Behind the painting is a story, and Ted is the one who tells it to Louisa: the history of the artwork, but also of the four friends who made it possible. It's a story of grief, but also of healing. I'll remember this one for a long time.
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