I first discovered Fredrik Backman’s work through the movie A Man Called Otto. I’m not sure if watching a movie counts as being “exposed to an author’s work,” but since Backman is the mind behind the story, I’d like to think it does. It had been years since a film truly captured my attention, until A Man Called Otto came along.

At the time, I didn’t even realize the movie was adapted from a book. I watched it during a long-haul flight without paying much attention to the synopsis or poster. Only later did I learn that it originated from A Man Called Ove. The film moved me deeply. I laughed, cried, and felt a mix of pity, warmth, and hope. I remember bawling my eyes out at the end and hiding under the airplane blanket, worried that the flight attendant might pass by and ask what was wrong. It’s safe to say it became one of the most memorable movies I’ve seen in the last decade.

As someone who believes that “the book is always better than the adaptation,” I can only imagine how much more powerful A Man Called Ove must be. Still, I haven’t read it yet because I know I’d spend the whole time comparing it to the movie instead of enjoying the story on its own terms.

That’s why I was thrilled to learn about Backman’s new novel, My Friends. Finally, I had the chance to experience his writing firsthand, without the shadow of a film adaptation.

From the very beginning, I was hooked. Backman’s storytelling pulled me into the lives of his characters: their personalities, their journeys, the ways they drifted apart and found each other again. Along the way, the book offered countless lines of wisdom, beautifully written and impossible to forget. Every word I read left me in awe.

Backman has a way of capturing the complexities of personality and life’s journey in each character that feels nothing short of genius. He invites readers to step into the full spectrum of human emotions, like joy, sorrow, love, loss, and makes it all feel so real. His writing is deeply moving. My Friends offers everything I hope to experience when I pick up a work of fiction.

Reading My Friends was a heartfelt and unforgettable experience.

My Favorite Bits

• Adults always think they can protect children by stopping them from going to dangerous places, but every teenager knows that’s pointless, because the most dangerous place on earth is inside us.

• Fish was murdered by reality. She was suffocated by the claustrophobia of being trapped on this planet, she died of being sad all the time.

• .. there is a speed at which a heart can beat that you can’t remember when you’ve stopped being young. (..) There is a sort of happiness so overwhelming that it is almost unbearable, your soul seems to kick its way through your bones.

• They said she was crazy and dangerous, and that the best thing she could do for the world was to not be in it.

• “Life is long, Louisa. Everyone will tell you that it’s short, but they’re lying. It’s a long, long life.”
• 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.

• We’re a bunch of lonely apes on a rock in the universe, our breath consists of eighty percent nitrogen, twenty percent oxygen, and one hundred percent anxiety.

• He’s dreamed of being able to say: “Being human is to grieve, constantly.” Because what he really wants to know is: “How the hell do all the rest of you cope?”

• Art is so big, so unfathomable, that it teaches us to mourn for strangers.

• .. in grief we are reminded that we’re human beings. In life we might be enemies, but when faced with death, we see the truth: we are one species, all we have is each other, and where you go, I shall follow.

• Adults often think that self-confidence is something a child learns, but little kids are by their nature always invincible, it’s self-doubt that needs to be taught.

• Children have two worlds, the one they have been given and the one they can dream about..

• “Everyone wants me to paint more pictures, but only until they buy one, because then they hope that I never paint again. My art is only an investment now, everyone who owns a piece of me hopes I’ll die, because nothing is more valuable at auction than an unfulfilled life.”

• Art is what we leave of ourselves in other people.

• “.. art is coincidence. A beautiful painting is the sum total of a person, what has happened to them, blessings and curses alike. Coincidences.”

• He wasn’t scared of death, because he had never expected to live a long life. He knew that happiness existed, but not for him. He believed in Heaven, that good people lived forever, just not that he was one of them.

• .. sometimes you don’t appreciate your own blessings until you see the envy in someone else.

• Fish always said that kind people were the worst, because at least with mean people you know what you’re dealing with. There’s no limit to how dangerous someone who seems kind can be.

• Human beings are capable of such unbelievable stupidity. We speak of the birth of a child as a miracle, but really the miracle is everything that comes after. The artist used to sit in a big window in his apartment looking at the people down in the street and muttering: “The dinosaurs died out, but you and I and all these idiots managed to survive? We do nothing but try to find ways to destroy everything that’s keeping us alive, but we’re still here?”

• Stories are complicated, memories are merciless, our brains only store a few moments from the best days of our lives, but we remember every second of the worst.

• 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.

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Author: Fredrik Backman
Publication date: 6 May 2025
Number of pages: 436 pages

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