Review by inkovert - My Friends

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inkovert 's review for:

My Friends by Fredrik Backman

5.0

dark emotional funny inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

He would often try to think that perhaps that has to be the case: that our teenage years have to simultaneously be the brightest light and the darkest depths, because that’s how we learn to figure out our horizons.

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do, with your one wild and precious life?”

There are no words to describe what this book is about or what it will make you feel as you're reading it. So I will just use Backman's own words because they always manage to be filled with all that needs to be said.

This is a book about friendship. About childhood summers. About finding your humans. About painting like the birds sing. About what a painting can do to a person. About one really good "now". Bad ideas. "One of us". "I love you and I trust you". "Good night, ghosts". Calling out "tomorrow!" at the crossroads. How hard it is to be a child. How hard it is to be an adult. How hard it is to be everything. It's about how art transforms us and about all the ways in which it exists around us: art is empathy, context, a moment, what we leave of ourselves in other people, a coincidence, a nakedness, your homeland. Art is what can't fit inside a person. Art teaches us to mourn for strangers. Art needs friends.

I smiled, I laughed, I cried, I got angry, my heart broke, sometimes all within the same page. I've said it time and time again that Backman has such a unique talent with capturing and encapsulating the complexity of the human experience in so few words. I stupidly began highlighting the lines that resonated with me until I realized there was no point because I really just wanted to highlight the entire damn book. I fell for these characters. Hard. I was crying for them by the second chapter even though I had just met them. And now I feel like I've known them forever and can't think of the time before they existed (ironically, a resounding theme within the novel itself). There's no point giving a synopsis or trying to explain what this book is about because Backman puts it all on the page and no summary or additional amount of words would do it anymore justice, so I won't even try. All I'll say is this is a book that everyone needs, now more than ever. It's a gift really. A solace. A way to cope. It will make you take life for granted, as we should, because that's the whole point of being here. Because it's crazy that we exist. And it's cool, really cool, that we happened at all.

“It’s art that helps me cope. Because art is a fragile magic, just like love, and that’s humanity’s only defense against death. That we create and paint and dance and fall in love, that’s our rebellion against eternity. Everything beautiful is a shield. Vincent van Gogh wrote: ‘I always think that the best way to know God is to love many things.’”

Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Content Warnings