When That Melody is All You Want

My Friends by Fredrik Backman

Pages: 436 Genre: literary fiction

Rating: 5 Star

Louisa loves a painting of the sea that isn't really a painting of the sea because it's a painting of three friends sitting together at the end of a pier surrounded by the sea. But 25 years earlier, the friends weren't the kids in the painting, they were 14-year-olds escaping their treacherous home lives to waste away by the sea. They laugh, they fight, and they are finding themselves. In the current day, the painting and its subjects come into Louisa's life and change everything she thought she understood.

I often struggle to write 5 Star reviews, but I struggle more with Fredrik Backman books. I don't know how to explain the experience of reading one of his books, and I can't find the words to tell you the impact they have. Objectively, I can understand that this narrative style will not appeal to everyone. But in practice I cannot fathom someone not being gripped by the way he imagines and unpacks stories.

My Friends is no exception for the ways I have come to know and love Fredrik Backman's writing. It's a nonlinear story, told as if the author is speaking to someone who knows they're hearing a story. It's unpacked at random, twists come from the narrator holding back, and phrases are constantly being defined and redefined. If you've read a Backman book or short story before, you know what to expect.

I loved the way that the love of art was written in this book. It wasn't really wasn't about the art itself, but how it made people — the artists and the onlookers both — feel. Positive or negative. Violently or lovingly. In a world overrun not only by Generative AI but people pretending its outputs are equal to artistic expression, I adore a book taking the definitive stance that art is not only what you see on the page but the full context that gives it a soul. Because art isn't just about conclusions or a price point, it's about art and what it means to you.

The sense of nostalgia embodied in this book was beautiful. I feel sentimental for a childhood that I didn't have. Backman does a great job of describing something specific in a universal way. My childhood was significantly and decidedly less devastating than it was for the friends who would become the kids in the painting, but some of the ways he described anxiety and teenage uncertainty and childhood adoration of kind adults felt so personal.

This is what makes the characters so great. Ted, Louisa, the artist, the friends, and everyone else felt so realized but also so universal. It's not just about the characters themselves but the feelings they represent. This is a theme very present in the novel, characters being remembered as larger or smaller than they are (or example) because of their behavior. I feel the same way in a literary sense.

My Friends is a beautiful story told in a remarkable way that shows a deep understanding of people and what makes them the way they are. It's chaotically human and full of reckless love that will disappoint, devastate, and relieve you.