My Friends – Fredrik Backman

Fredrik Backman is a stunning writer. I rarely highlight what I am reading, even when I love the writing and even though, because they are e-books, I am not damaging a paperback or hardcover version of a novel. There is something about the way Backman thinks as he creates, once again, unforgettable characters that makes me stop, reread and highlight. And at the end, the reader is left wondering if My Friends is part autobiographical, but who knows. It reads as an homage to a group of four fourteen year old kids growing up twenty-five years ago in a dying town where dock work is the only kind of job most people will find. However, the story begins in the present.

Louisa has permanently emancipated herself from foster care a day early to go to a gallery where a painting by a world famous artist is to be auctioned off. It is a painting he did the summer he was fourteen. Louisa found a postcard of the painting many years ago and it spoke to her. It made it through foster care with her. She is artistic herself. The painting depicts an expanse of water with a pier in the distance and on the pier are some people, so tiny that only the most observant people would note them. By the artist’s nom de plume signature, JCat are some tiny skulls. When she gets to the gallery, it is obvious to Louisa that those looking to purchase the painting do not appreciate it for itself. It is an investment. It will make them more notable in the collector’s world. Louisa goes outside in a mood and there, she meets an apparently sick, homeless man. They engage with one another and he learns she is artistic. He invites her to paint on the wall of the gallery and then he adds some very familiar skulls. He is the artist.

As a result of this encounter, Louisa ends up owning the painting that was auctioned and on a long trip with Ted, one of the four teenagers on the pier from that summer 25 years ago. And throughout their journey they are, at best uneasily paired. Eventually, over time and because of her great need, Louisa learns not only about how the painting came into being, but the life stories of four misfits who found one another. “She’s one of us.” That’s how the artist explained his short time with Louisa to Ted. It hied back to what a kind person once told him about being an artist. Christian is gone, but he had a great influence on the artist. When an art teacher gives the artist grief about his failure to follow instructions in his artwork, Christian, a school janitor and an artist told him he had great talent. He told him that art is your homeland. You will recognize those like you.

Louisa has lived a life of tremendous instability and trauma. She is unconventional, independent, creative, interesting and strong but damaged. Ted is gay. He always wanted to write, but he became a teacher. That did not work out and he took care of the artist in his illness. When they end up together for a time, due largely to Louisa’s persistence, Ted tells her about that summer of the painting. So we learn about Joar, Ted, Ali and the artist. Joar lived in a house filled with domestic violence and he feared for his mother’s and his life. Ted’s father was ill for so much of Ted’s life he has almost no memory of when he was well. Ted is mercilessly bullied at school and he disappoints his mother because he is not enough of a man. Ali, a spirited independent girl who joins the others that year also lives in an abusive home. She tries to get home late to avoid problem adults. The four spend every day together, mostly at the pier, swimming and talking but also spending some evenings at Ted’s the safest house. Each evening when they separate, they call out, “tomorrow!’ Their greeting the next day is, ‘here!’ And for the entire summer, the artist is ‘supposed” to finish the painting and it keeps getting kicked down the road. He is very insecure.

Between Christian’s kindness and perceptions, Joar’s insistence the artist needed to finish a painting and enter it into a competition, creating a deadline, and their finding a way to get paint supplies, the artist found his courage and his vision and finished the painting. Joar’s real motive was to get the artist going toward a departure from the town and his becoming the world famous artist Christian said he could be. And it worked. He moved out. And became famous. And became terminally ill just as “the” painting was around 25 years old and would be sold to the highest bidder. The summer pictured, the tiny friends on the pier that evoked memories of a unique, undying friendship, the image of them being safe and happy some of the time was at risk.

So, Ted tells Louisa absolutely devastating tales along the way, yet there is so much love, so much adventure, so much support and validation that for a time each of the four was okay. Louisa understands deeply because she too had a friend, now dead, Fish who was to her what Ted’s circle was to him. Every character, dead or alive or hovering on the edge comes bursting into our hearts when reading My Friends. It is a more painful read than I first expected but it was so lovely and the characters and their lives felt so important in the telling that there was always a sweetness to it all. Just, read it.