Title: My Friends by Fredrik Backman, translated from Swedish by Neil Smith
Book Beginnings excerpt:
Louisa is a teenager, the best kind of human.
Friday56 excerpt, from page 22, the last page of preview:
Then he asked one of the other fourteen-year-olds: "Do you think we'll all still be friends when we're grown up?"
Summary:
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 aspiring 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 seaside town, a group of teenagers find refuge from their bruising home lives by spending long summer days on an abandoned pier, telling silly jokes, sharing secrets, and committing small acts of rebellion. These lost souls find in each other a reason to get up each morning, a reason to dream, a reason to love.
Out of that summer emerges a transcendent work of art, a painting that will unexpectedly be placed into eighteen-year-old Louisa’s care. She embarks on a surprise-filled cross-country journey to learn how the painting came to be and to decide what to do with it. The closer she gets to the painting’s birthplace, the more nervous she becomes about what she’ll find. Louisa is proof that happy endings don’t always take the form we expect in this stunning testament to the transformative, timeless power of friendship and art. (Publisher)
Review: I have an uneasy relationship with Fredrik Backman books. I've read four of them: A Man Named Ove; Anxious People; Beartown; and now My Friends. All of them were slow-starters for me. I had to make myself read them (all four were book club selections) and I would put it off as long as possible. This is unusual reading behavior for me. With My Friends, I got the audiobook from the library after a fairly long wait and I still couldn't make myself listen, so I checked out the print version and made a little progress but I wasn't even a fourth of the way finished before that book needed to be returned. Once again I had to wait for the audiobook. This time, with the clock ticking, I finally finished the book and you know what? I liked it. Surprise, surprise. What was my problem in the first place?
The story is told of the four teenage friends the summer they helped launch the artist's talents, when he painted the beautiful piece of his friends on the pier, a painting now worth millions. Then a jump forward in time of 25 years when the artist and Louisa meet up by chance -- a disillusioned teenager and a dying man. This meeting changes the trajectory of her life. What follows is a road trip (via train) and the unspooling of a story of friendship and love.
Because I was so grumpy about the bad start I had with the book I was determined not to like the finished product -- my fault not the author's. But I confess that days after I finished reading My Friends I was still living inside the lives of the four +one teenager's lives. I wanted the story to go on. I missed the book when I was finished. (I'm rolling my eyes at myself right now.) And I know that is a sign of a good book.
My advice to you if you'd like to give this one a chance, don't TRY to read this book and muck around for two months, just START and KEEP GOING. The story will grow on you if you aren't all in at the beginning.
My rating; 4 stars
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