It is Hard to Be a Human
Please note that I am now an Affiliate Marketer on Amazon. This means my book reviews will include a link to the book on Amazon. If you purchase the book using my link, I will earn a small commission. This is at no additional cost to you. More details here. Thank you for supporting my Book Blog in this manner.
*****
I like Fredrik Backman’s books because he understands and comments on how hard it is to be a human. In that all of the main characters in My Friends have had hard lives, their experiences as humans are especially challenging.
Take for example, Louisa, the first character we meet. She never knew her father and her mother walked off when she was a child. Therefore, she is the product of foster homes too numerous to count. Her good friend from foster care, Fish, and she make sure to sleep with a screwdriver in hand to ward off unwanted advances in the night.
Louisa is an almost eighteen-year-old girl when the book opens. She is at an art auction in a church seeing a painting – in person – that she has loved for a long time. The painting is called, The One of the Sea, and it was created by the world-famous artist, C. Jat. All sorts of hijinks occur after she is thrown out of the auction including an accidental – and very brief meeting – with C. Jat himself.
If anyone pays close attention to the painting they will note more than just the sea, they will notice three kids sitting on the pier. Readers soon learn that these are the artist’s dear friends from the summer they all turned fifteen, which is also the year the painting was created.
*****
As the book progresses we learn how the painting came into existence. Since neither the artist (as he is called throughout) nor his friends have any money, just the supplies for a painting are miraculous enough. And speaking of miraculous, there is so much drama surrounding the lives of the four friends, their survival to adulthood is tricky to imagine.
In brief outline, the artist had parents who just want him to be “normal” while his artistic nature assures he is not. Meanwhile, the mother is pretty much out of the picture due to addiction and the father is physically present, but not emotionally.
Of the friends, we have Joar, Ali, and Ted. Joar has an alcoholic father who beats up on him and on his mother. Ali’s mother has died and her father is not the kind of person who can hold down a job, so she and the dad move with some regularity. Death also visit’s Ted’s home when his father dies of cancer that summer.
When My Friends opens and the painting is being sold at auction, it is twenty-five years after its creation. And on that day, in that quick encounter between the artist and Louisa, the artist finds a kindred spirit in her which causes him to give her a very generous gift some weeks or months later.
Ted is the one who brings the gift to Louisa and Ted is the one who tells her – and the reader – the entire long story behind the painting including all the hijinks of four teenagers twenty-five years ago, farts and all.
*****
Click here to learn more about My Friends on Amazon.
*****
Click here to join the Book Lovers Club. I post about three dozen book reviews a year. If you would like to receive them as I write them, please join the Club.
*****
And one last thing! Amazon has named me an Influencer (!!!!) and invited me to open a Storefront. You will find lots of my favorite things there including fun gifts for people who love to read. Check it out!
Leave a Reply