My Friends

 

My Friends

By Fredrik Backman

Friendships mean everything. They shape our lives in ways we often don’t fully grasp until something shifts. I’ve written before that my mother once told me I was blessed with the gift of friendships. She reminds me often: I’ve always been surrounded by people who truly care for me… who show up… who would do anything for me… who love me deeply. I’ve never doubted it. But since moving recently, I’ve felt that absence in a way that’s hard to put into words.

In My Friends, the story portrays the power of friendship as a lifeline through grief and chaos, showing how shared memories and quiet loyalty can transcend time, loss, and even art itself.

“That’s all of life. All we can hope for. You mustn’t think about the fact that it might end, because then you live like a coward—you never love too much or sing too loudly. You have to take it for granted, the artist thinks, the whole thing: sunrises and slow Sunday mornings and water balloons and another person’s breath against your neck. That’s the only courageous thing a person can do.”

But lately, I’ve felt that courage slipping. The news is a relentless drumbeat of grief. I hike alone, paddleboard alone...seeking peace in solitude...but even there, I hesitate. Because people are being murdered while simply living their lives. Buying groceries. Walking dogs. Laughing with friends. And suddenly, the breath against your neck feels like a risk. The sunrise, a fragile promise. It’s terrifying. Lord, come quickly.

And yet...what choice do we have but to keep loving too much and singing too loudly? To take it for granted, not because we’re naïve, but because we refuse to let fear steal the music from our lives. 

The story follows Louisa, an almost-eighteen-year-old aspiring artist who becomes captivated by a famous painting, "The One of the Sea." Where most people just view the sea...they miss the three tiny figures tucked into a forgotten corner of the canvas. Most people overlook them. But she doesn’t. She becomes determined to uncover their story. Her journey across the country mirrors her internal one: a quiet search for meaning, for connection, for a way to make sense of her own sorrow.

Decades earlier, in a seaside town, a group of teens with fractured home lives found refuge on an abandoned pier. They spent their summer telling jokes, sharing secrets, surviving in the only ways they knew how. That summer, and the love they found in each other…inspired the painting now in Louisa’s hands. What begins as a mystery becomes something deeper: a meditation on growing up, on memory, on holding grief and joy in the same breath.

Twenty years later, the artist literally bumps into Louisa…quirky, awkward, fiercely intelligent, raised in foster care…as she flees the church where his painting was auctioned. He instantly recognizes her as one of them. He devises a plan, enlisting Ted to carry it out before he leaves this earth. That’s how Louisa becomes part of their love story and discovers the true meaning behind The One of the Sea…a painting that isn’t about the sea at all, but about the depth of friendship… and yes, a fart.

Louisa says, "This is a painting of laughter, and you can only understand that if you are full of holes, because then laughter is a small treasure. Adults will never understand that, because they don't laugh at farts, and how the hell are you supposed to trust the judgement of someone like that with something as important as art?"

There’s something quietly brutal about how this book explores growing up. How people drift. How those we swore we’d never lose slowly fade into the background. Sometimes you don’t even notice it happening. One day you just… stop talking. And you don’t know why. But then a book like this comes along, and suddenly, you feel sad…nostalgic…a little broken…a little grateful.

My Friends gave language to a grief I didn’t know I was carrying. It made me mourn people I haven’t even lost yet. Maybe it’s the move. Maybe it’s something deeper.

It reminded me that connection doesn’t vanish. It shifts, it evolves, but it doesn’t disappear. Grief is just love with nowhere to go. And art…whether it’s a painting, a story, or a shared memory…is how we hold on. It’s how we say: you mattered to me.

This story reminds us that life often gives us exactly who we need, exactly when we need them. These characters endured the worst of humanity, yet together they found what their families couldn’t: a safe space to be their truest selves, and moments of joy in a place that had so little to offer.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Sometimes, it’s worth a lifetime. And sometimes, that lifetime…is a summer.

TOMORROW!