My Friends by Fredrik Backman – A Review

Everyone is talking about My Friends. Not Everyone, but every newspaper and online publication at least. NYT bestseller, nominee of Goodreads Choice Awards, a favoured book club pick worldwide.

People are crying, laughing, caring, emoting across a spectrum of possibilities as they read this book. Or so I am given to believe.

I cried too. Begging for mercy that this book better end.

I have always been a bit divided on Backman. I like some of his works, but not all of them, and I believe every one of them are worth heavy editing. The best of his works I have liked so far is “Answer is No” not least because it is a novella (novelette actually). But the reason I still read him is that he does stir emotions of a kind within me, making me look a bit more kindly at myself.

My Friends, unfortunately, isn’t a book I’d be recommending to anyone anytime, sooner or later.

It is a treatise in tedium, going back and forth between an artist and his friends and the artist and a younger artist. It starts promisingly well enough, with some adventure and chance encounters thrown in. But every next page seems to be a steep path downhill, much like the steep down-the-hill the author describes the artist and his friends taking on their cycles during their adolescence.

The premise is interesting, art for the sake of art, not for money or pride or name or whatever. But, the ending simply doesn’t stack up to an elegant solution that could have actually solved some problems, instead being an idealistic and unrealistic one that makes my rational self want to interrogate the author and his characters deeply.

Of course, that could be why I am not an artist but it could also be why I can write discerning reviews helping readers spend their time wisely.

If you are in the market for a feel-good book, this isn’t it. If you are in the market for a book on friendships, this isn’t it. If you are in the market for a tearjerker, this isn’t it either; there are tearjerkers aplenty that are more logical than this one.

If you are in the market for a Backman and have exhausted all other Backmans and have a bookshelf that you dedicate to his books, well, you don’t have an option really.