Book Review: "My Friends" by Fredrik Backman

This book has been all over Bookstagram, and deservedly so. I’m a huge fan of Fredrik Backman’s, but I tend to love those of his books that are more serious and emotional. And he sure knows how to make me cry!

“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. Fragile hearts break in palaces and in dark alleys alike.”

You can obviously tell from the title that this is a book about friendship, but it is so much more than that. This is a story about loss, loneliness, the love we feel in our souls and the joy when that love is reciprocated. It’s also a story about rescuing those in need, even when you’re in need of rescue yourself.

In this book, as in his Beartown trilogy, some of Backman’s characters have known great pain, sadness, even hopelessness. Yet quite often, they still find the strength to endure, to experience joy, to love, even as their hearts are broken. That is one aspect that makes his books so meaningful and moving to me.

“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.” (I felt this quote in my soul.)

From the very first words in this book, I was reminded of a line from one of my favorite movies, Stand By Me. It goes, “I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?” (Substitute 14 for 12, and that summed up so much of what made this book special.) I have no doubt this will be one of my favorite books of the year.