Really lovely story if they friendship and overcoming the worst childhoods the world has to offer. Sad but kind and caring

Fredrik Backman’s My Friends is ostensibly about a painting—its subjects, its origin, and the teenager who becomes its unlikely caretaker. But that’s just the frame. At its core, this novel is about kinship. It’s about the invisible threads that link people with shared histories, shared pain, and the kind of deep understanding that comes not from blood but from enduring life alongside one another.

I opened this book expecting to be emotionally moved, as Backman has done to me many times before. But this time, he didn’t wait for the ending to break my heart—he shattered it from the very first chapter. Louisa, an eighteen-year-old runaway and gifted artist, is introduced in a moment of fear and vulnerability. A misunderstanding at an art auction leads to a chance encounter with a man who recognizes her pain, her potential, and her need to be seen. That brief but powerful moment becomes a pivot in Louisa’s life and sets the novel’s journey into motion.

What follows is a story within a story. One of the man’s old friends—someone connected to the painting and the people in it—finds Louisa and begins recounting his own childhood and the origins of the painting. These recollections are full of humor, heartache, and the kind of youthful mischief that can only occur among kids who need each other more than they dare to admit. It’s a story about art, yes—but more than that, it’s about how love and loyalty can transform pain into beauty, and how friendships can become family when nothing else is safe.

Louisa's own story unfolds alongside these recollections, and the parallels are subtle but powerful. She listens, shares, and begins to see herself as part of a broader, older story—one that transcends time, trauma, and even the canvas.

This novel is filled with observations about life that are at once simple and searing. It is a book that demands to be reread, not just for the story, but for the lines that catch in your chest and refuse to leave. Though I received a digital copy from the publisher, I’ll be purchasing a physical copy just to mark it up, tab the pages, and press it into the hands of anyone willing to listen to me talk about it.

My Friends is a book about grief and healing. About how friendships save us. About the way we carry each other forward, even when we’re no longer here. It is, quite simply, a book I will cherish.

Reading My Friends by Fredrik Backman felt like having a long, honest conversation with someone who truly understands the quiet struggles of being human. Backman has a rare gift for writing about ordinary people in extraordinary emotional depth, and this book is no exception. Personally, I found myself completely absorbed—laughing in one moment and unexpectedly tearing up the next.

What stood out most to me was how Backman captures the unspoken pain and quiet joys of friendship, especially the kind that isn’t loud or dramatic but quietly life-saving. His characters aren’t perfect, and that’s exactly what makes them unforgettable.

If you’ve ever felt like an outsider, or wrestled with how to show up for someone you care about, My Friends will speak to you. It's one of those books I’ll recommend to others not just because it's beautifully written, but because it made me feel more human.

Every time I start a Fredrik Backman book, I kick myself for not having already devoured every last piece of his backlist. He has a beautiful, almost magical way of putting into words the experience of life: its rawness, its absurdity, its staggering beauty. My Friends is no exception. It’s a masterclass in emotional storytelling that reminds me, in equal parts, of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin and Stand By Me by Stephen King. Stories drenched in coming-of-age nostalgia, soaked in the bittersweet ache of growing up and growing apart.

At its core, My Friends is about love. Not romantic love, but the quieter, stronger kind: friendship. The dysfunctional, self-sacrificing kind. The kind that looks like found families, unlikely bonds, and people who don’t always say what they feel but are always there. This is a book full of friends who know their place in the world, who don’t strive to take the spotlight but who anchor the people they care about.

The dual timelines, spread across a cast of diverse characters, are handled with remarkable clarity. In a lesser writer’s hands, the story could easily have felt fragmented. But here, the shifts in time and perspective are seamless. Each layer adds depth to the whole. It’s ambitious and sprawling but never messy. Just deeply, deeply human.

Backman’s signature ability to nail an observation you’ve had but never quite articulated is on full display. Some of his lines are so succinct they feel like they were written just for you. I found myself slowing my audiobook speed way down, something I never do, just to savor the rhythm and weight of the prose. This book is quotable in the truest sense. One line in particular knocked the wind out of me:

“He didn’t want to prove to the world how good the artist was; he wanted to prove it to the artist himself.”

That line mirrors a sentiment from Richard Bach’s There’s No Such Place As Far Away—the idea that the value of a life doesn’t lie in applause but in connection. In recognition. And My Friends takes that one step further, offering a quiet but potent critique of the “art world.” It questions who gets to decide what art is worth while honoring the artists who make it anyway, for themselves, for someone they love, for permanence. For a kind of immortality.

That’s one of the most moving parts of this novel: its exploration of why we create. It doesn’t romanticize art-making. It humanizes it. Being "one of us," as the book puts it, means understanding that art isn’t about galleries or gatekeepers. It’s about staying alive through what we leave behind. The book asks, gently but insistently, what does it mean to truly live? What happens when we die? And what, if anything, survives?

The friendships here are based on contrast, opposites who still, somehow, understand each other better than anyone else could. There’s warmth and banter that feels completely natural, the kind that makes your cheeks hurt from smiling. Mine did, by the final three hours, which I listened to all in one stretch, heart racing, laughter caught in my throat.

“The sound of the doors being unlocked inside the boy then should have been heard around the world, the ground should have shaken, that's how much everything changed inside him.”

Fredrik Backman doesn’t just write stories. He writes about emotional architecture. He builds a world, gives you keys, and lets you move in. And when you leave, you’re not quite the same person who opened the first page.

Backman has always asked big questions with simple words, but this one ends with a question that lingers, like a final note in a symphony:

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

This book is the reason Backman is one of my favorite authors.

As soon as I saw he had a new book I already knew I was going to love. I knew it was going to bring out every emotion for me, and I didn’t want to rush it away.

My friends did just that. I will be reading something and laughing but then in the same breath cry.

The story of friendship and belonging is too beautiful and real. The heartbreak, the love. Believing in people. Even if you have read Backman and don’t love his quirky writing style I highly encourage you to give this one a shot. It hits a little different and is raw and beautiful!

I loved it and could not put it down. This is a book I wish I could read for the first again!

He can do no wrong.
An absolute ride of a book that had me feeling all the emotions. I truly think that Backman’s way of story telling is something to be studied. Heartbreaking, beautiful, inspiring, thought-provoking. What an amazing book!

Review Below!

My Friends
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

“𝑰 𝒍𝒐𝒗𝒆 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝑰 𝒕𝒓𝒖𝒔𝒕 𝒚𝒐𝒖.”

“𝘈𝘳𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘸𝘦 𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘷𝘦𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘱𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦.”

This book is genuinely one of the best found family book I’ve ever read. Backman has the ability to take something as innocuous as a painting for sale at an auction and turn it into a story of grief, sacrifice, friendship, and protecting those you love.

Two decades ago, a painting known as “the one of the sea” was created by an artist known as C. Jat & soon became one of the most sought after piece of artwork ever. But who is C.Jat? And why is it that no one notices what the painting is truly showcasing, which is three friends on a pier. Our protagonist, Louisa, has wanted to see this painting in person for as long as she can remember. It’s inspired her to become an artist as well while living in foster care. After successfully sneaking into the auction for the painting & escaping capture, she literally runs into the artist himself in an alleyway. Sparking a conversation, the artist sees that she reminds him of himself & his friends. He shortly passes away, leaving his best friend Ted with the task of finding Louisa & giving her his famous painting he bought back.

The friend group of the artist consists of himself, Joar, Ali, and Ted. With beautiful imagery, we embark on a tale with past & present storylines that explain the friends 15th summer & what happened then. These four lost souls find kinship in each other & give each other a reason to get up in the morning, to love, & to dream. Despite their harsh upbringing & struggles, the friends work tirelessly to ensure that the artist creates his artwork. As Louisa tries to figure out what to do with the painting, she travels back to the place it all began with Ted and learns the story of the friends.

This story was a never ending rollercoaster of thinking I knew how things would turn out, only to be repeatedly wrong (in the best way possible). So witty, captivating, heartbreaking, and just truly beautiful. I was stopping to highlight passages and one-liners because they spoke to me. The feeling of being human is encapsulated within this book. I promise it is worth the read!

Published in translation by Atria Books on May 6, 2025

Fredrik Backman has such a gentle sense of humor and writes from such a humane point of view that he might be unique among contemporary authors. My Friends examines life from the perspectives of four fifteen-year-old friends, from the perspectives of two of the friends after they reach middle age, and from the perspective of a snarky 17-year-old girl on the cusp of adulthood. The story revolves around the last perfect summer than the teenage friends spent together and the effort that one of those friends, now well into adulthood, makes to help the teenage girl.

One of the four friends is now a famous artist who, having nearly reached the age of 40, is about to die. The artist signs his paintings C. Jat but is known throughout the novel as “the artist” or Kimkim. His most famous painting is of the sea — that’s all rich art collectors notice, apart from the price tag — but to Louisa, the 17-year-old, it is a painting of kids on a pier that rich collectors never seem to notice. Louisa loves to draw. She has a postcard of the painting, but she sneaks into an art show where the painting is being sold because she needs to see it in person.

When the police chase her (they assume that she intends to deface the painting with the spray paint in her bag), Louisa hides in an alley next to a homeless bum who kindly misdirects the cops. The bum is quickly revealed as the famous artist when they begin to paint graffiti on an alley wall together.

The artist has been living with Ted, one of the childhood friends. The novel implies that they are lovers but their relationship is built on love regardless of how they might express it. The artist instructs Ted to buy the painting of the sea and give it to Louisa so she can sell it and live a good life as she pursues her own art. Louisa wants to reject the gift because she has always lost everything — including her parents and a best friend who died. She is certain she will lose any money that might come from the sale of the painting.

Ted wants to rid himself of Louisa but his loyalty to the artist compels him to assure that Louisa takes the painting. They continue their argument on a train journey that will eventually take them to the town where Ted, the artist, and their two friends — Joat and Ali — spent their last summer together. Along the way, Ted tells Louisa the story of that summer. The story is about childhood friendships and lasting bonds, but it is also about child abuse and how friends save each other. Some of the story is about death, the ways people process the loss of a friend or family member. And it’s about way in which friends recognize and encourage talents that young people might otherwise be too insecure to pursue.

Backman is given to platitudes. He hits the reader with new ones on nearly every page. “The world is full of miracles, but none greater than how far a young person can be carried by someone else’s belief in them.” “That’s the worst thing about death, that it happens over and over again. That the human body can cry forever.” “Because art is a fragile magic, just like love, and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.” And so on. Some of them are insightful. Some are schmaltzy. Many are redundant. Still, a cheerful author with good intentions can brighten days made dim by the relentless onslaught of insults that passes for discourse in America.

Because the book is crowded with platitudes, it takes some time to tell a simple story. The plot involves Ted’s journey with Louisa to a destination where she can find assistance selling the painting. Each of them tries to abandon the other along the way, but they learn that they are not good at abandoning people. Ted takes a beating — not the first in his life and the reason he doesn’t like to go outside. Louisa shows off her aptitude for theft. As the journey unfolds, Ted tells Louisa about the kids in the painting, all of whom are damaged in some way. Their goal that summer is to make the artist paint something (they execute various schemes so they can acquire paints and a canvas) because they know that unchaining his potential is the only way he will survive the harsh reality of life.

The platitudes add up to a theme. Backman argues that we are at our best as children because we understand the importance of close personal bonds, loyalty, and trust. We love our friends as we will never love again. In adulthood, we spend our lives trying to regain the wisdom we had as children. We fail miserably. We don’t mean what we say and we don’t say what we mean. But we try to improve because regaining the childhood capacity to love is all that will save us. The life-changing power of art is another theme. The ending brings a pay-it-forward theme.

In my experience with kids, as well as my memory of being one, teens rarely express profound thoughts. Nor are they as kind, or at least as aware of the need for sensitivity of their friends’ feelings, as the kids in Backman’s world. Still, it’s a fun story and, notwithstanding an excess of schmaltzy platitudes, My Friends teaches lessons that merit the reader's consideration.

RECOMMENDED

Thank you to Atria and Fredrik Backman for this ARC.

I can always count on Fredrik Backman to make me fall in love with his unforgettable characters and then break my heart in the most beautiful ways. 🥹💗 My Friends is another masterpiece of literary fiction that will stay with me long after I turned the final page.

🫟 What did you love the most?
This book made me cry in almost every chapter. Backman’s portrayal of friendship is so tender and honest that it made me long for that same deep, soul-touching connection in real life. 💗 Themes of loss, nostalgia, and the human need to be seen and understood echo through every page, making it impossible to set this novel aside. 😭

One of my favorite elements was how Backman explores what it feels like to think differently from those around you. Certain characters felt too big for their small town, and that tension between circumstance and ambition was so relatable. 🙌

🫟 What to expect:
🗣️ Multiple POVs that give you a panoramic view of the town and its people
🔄 Dual timelines that weave past and present together
🫂 Childhood friendships that shape the entire narrative
🖼️ A mysterious painting at the center of everything

🫟 How was the pace?
Backman’s novels are always more focused on character development and emotional resonance, so the pacing is naturally slower, but I never felt bored.

🫟 Do you recommend this book?
Absolutely. This book had me reflecting on my own childhood and the friendships that carried me through tough times. 💙 When a book makes you feel seen and nostalgic all at once, it’s truly something special. My Friends is a novel I know I’ll return to again and again. 📖

I was given an ARC of this title from NetGalley for my honest opinion. This is my third book by Fredrik Backman and I absolutely LOVED this book. It should definitely come with trigger warnings as there were heavy topics, but it made me feel all the feels. I fell in love with all the characters and their beautiful personalities. Readers, get ready for an amazing journey while reading this story!

Wow! My friends gave me “A Little Life” lite vibes. It was heavier than I expected, but quite the emotional rollercoaster. And wasn’t that cover a master stroke?!
The novel goes back & forth in time with a central cast of characters. I wanted to know what happened with the kids in the past, but trusted the process Backman had in store for us. These characters will stay with you long after finishing the book. Definitely one of the books of the summer!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for this ARC.

I am going to be the odd man out and say this book was fine. I will admit that I’m not the biggest Fredrik Backman fan, so I wasn’t expecting to love this book.

I just felt that there were parts that dragged on, and I was bored in the beginning. Overall, not for me.

Dual timelines telling the story about a group of friends and the hardships they endured. This wasn’t my favorite of his books, but I’m in the minority.

Find me someone who writes about the human experience better than Fredrik Backman. I dare you. He is one of those authors whose books I will read, sight unseen, and I know I will never be disappointed.

I think what I loved best about this book, and all of his books, is that there aren’t really any “bad guys” or “good guys”. There are people doing the best they can with the life they’ve been given and everyone is flawed. Is Joar’s father a villain in this story? He’s definitely the closest thing the book has to a villain, but the idea that bad people can do good things and vice versa is at the heart of every Backman novel, and the fact that he opens up that debate is what I love so much. I want to know Ted and Louisa in real life and I hope my friends think of me in the same way the friends in this novel think of each other.

I really enjoy Backman's writing and have read almost all of his books. This one was not entirely what I was expecting and I would say it was not one of my favorites, but it is still worth reading as part of the larger Backman collection. Backman has a way of writing that makes you think a story is about one thing, but then it zooms out and you think it is about something else, but really you are going to zoom out several more times and realize you thought you were looking at a picture of an ant, but really the picture is of a school yard and the ant was just crawling across a discarded apple as heaps of children play. You might think this story is about a young runaway budding artist and her absent friend, but then it is about an older artist and his friends, but then it is about one of his friends and the young artist, but wait, now it's about the original friends of the older artist when they are young, and on and on. The story is rich and layered, but it has a great deal of sadness throughout. The way the narrative unfolds is similar to his Beartown series, but this story does have a redeeming lightness that Beartown never had. This is a deeper read than many people would want to take to the beach, but it is a well developed story with many tales of redemption to buoy the tragedy.

Fredrick Backman has a unique ability to capture the humanity in the people society instantly dismisses. His writing style pulls the reader into their world and makes us want to follow and cheer for them in their lowest of times. When all hope seems lost for someone, he draws in the reader and shows them the light. His playful word play will cause one to chuckle at the right times to lighten the mood. He shows through his delightful characters that there’s always redemption and there’s always a way forward. It’s never too late to keep dreaming and reaching for our goals.

As a fan of Backman's writing and other stories of his, I was so excited to be able to access this book early as an ARC-- thank you to Atria for approving my ARC request in exchange for an honest review.

In My Friends, readers are taken into the lives and pasts of multiple characters, in a way so true to Backman's style-- weaving the stories together while allowing depth enough for readers to become attached and engaged with each story. This story begins with Louisa, a young girl whose life has thrown her every reason to doubt herself and her worth, and develops her love for art, deep care and sincerity for others, and shaky hope in a brighter future. Her adventure begins with her love of a painting, and as the story proceeds, she discovers (through her unexpected pairing up with Tom) the past of those depicted in the painting that has inspired her for so long.

This story beautifully depicts friendship (and the bonds that persist past time and distance), the impact of art, the significance (and possibility of) change coming from small decisions, and the paradoxical painful joy that exists in the temporary nature of our lives. Backman's characters felt like friends by 1/3 into the novel; I found myself hoping for them and rooting them on while also appreciating the humanity given to them by their downfalls and mistakes. I love Backman's writing, and this book has served to solidify just how true that is.

I think this book has a lot of potential, but I need to read it again when I have nothing stressful on my plate. I appreciated that this is a mix of a love story and the bonds of four friends who need each other more than they realize at age 14.

This is one of those books you finish that puts you in a slump because it was so good, nothing can compete! Fredrick Bachman does it again in this story of life we follow a few different characters at different points in their life but it all ties back together giving such interesting perspectives on love , death and farting that I will be thinking about this book for a long time to come. The writing in this book was stunning with a pace that had me flying through this book in no time, wanting more tales of coming of age kids and the adults who remember the good old days. At this point I will read about anything this author writes and would recommend his writing to just about anyone. The only thing I warn is be prepared for a good cry! I would like to thank NetGalley and the publishers for a chance to read this book for an honest review.

Fredrik Backman has done it again with My Friends, creating deep characters and relationships that pull on the heart strings of the reader.

Louisa is 18, leaving the foster system and alone in the world. A trip to visit a famous painting that has been a beacon in her life, results in a collision (both figuratively and actual) with a world famous artist. Stories are carefully layered together from different characters and timelines, pulling the reader deeper into an understanding of the relationships that define them.

This novel is heavy but has light-hearted moments. It is sad, but also hopeful. It other words, it is a bit of a class Fredrik Backman rollercoaster, with a lovable cast of misfits. I recommend this book for those who enjoy coming of age stories, stories about deep and complex friendships, and found families. Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books for an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

OMG. Such a great book. I. couldn't put it down but I don't want it to be over. I just fell in love with all of the characters. The story was painful with some of the darkness of the Beartown series but there was hope and love and humor that made it bearable and actually uplifting. I just LOVE everything by Backman, but I think this might be the best on yet.