My Friends by Fredrik Backman

 

Title:  My Friends

Author:  Fredrik Backman

Narrated by:  Marin Ireland

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio

Length: Approximately 13 hours and 22 minutes

Source: Review copy from Simon Audio.  Thank-you!

What is your favorite book featuring friendship?

Louisa is a young orphan and artist with a goal to see one of the most famous paintings in the world, “Of the Sea.”  Many people didn’t notice that there are three kids on a pier in the painting.  After finally getting to see it on display, Louisa meets a man she assumes to be homeless in an alley, but who is the dying artist.  This sets Louisa on the path of learning about how the painting came to be and about the friends on the pier.  Will Louisa finally find “her people?”

My thoughts on this novel:

·       My Friends by Fredrik Backman is one of my favorite reads of 2025.

·       I love Fredrik Backman’s humor and talk about the hard things in life such as child abuse, death from cancer, abandonment, etc.

·       Backman has a way of completing capturing childhood and how much friendships mean to us.

·       The beauty and wonder of art are also themes.

·       Another important theme is how kindness can help others to value themselves.

·       Louisa’s best friend Fish has committed suicide, and she is trying to deal with that as well as finding a pathway out of the foster system.

·       Part of the story is a travel story where two characters travel together, Ted and Louisa, and have an adventure.  Ted tells Louisa stories of the past and the artist as a child.

·       I loved Ted and Louisa’s dynamic together.

·       Marin Ireland is a great audiobook narrator that kept me intrigued.

·       This was a coming-of-age story.

·       The kids in the story from the past were all from the poor side of town and around the age of fourteen.

·       The mystery kept me intrigued.  How get the artist get the paint for his famous picture as a poor fourteen-year-old?  How did he become famous?  What death or event is foreshadowed that takes these kids over the divide from childhood to adulthood? 

·       My Friends is a beautiful story.  It’s hard to explain the beauty of the story as Backman is such a unique and wonderful writer who really writes about the truths of life.

Overall, My Friends by Fredrik Backman is one of the best books of this year.  It’s a beautiful, unique, and ultimately uplifting story about friendship and life.  I highly recommend it.