My Friends Fredrik Backman Review: A Happy Story That Will Make You Cry
My Friends by Fredrik Backman is a beautiful, tender and painful (yes, beautiful, yet mostly painful) story written to quietly wreck you. It’s about friendship and art... and some memories. Memories and stories of childhood. The ones you hold onto. Blurry, faded, still powerful.
It’s a book that makes you laugh while crying and cry while laughing. Quite devastating – in all the right ways. Actually, it’s a happy story that will make you cry.
You should sit with a box of tissues while reading it. And a trash can to throw them all in.
My Rating:
❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
A happy story that will make you cry.
What the Book is About
Fredrik Backman’s My Friends is a novel centred on Louisa, a young artist. A teenage orphan with a sketchbook and a whole lot of questions. She’s been obsessed with a decades-old painting of the sea. Not the sea itself, but three small figures on a pier.
Her desire leads her into the lives of a group of friends who once spent a summer by that same sea – loving, hurting, growing up, falling apart. The narrative unfolds across two timelines: the past, where the painter and his friends live through their adolescence; and the present, where Louisa listens to their stories from one of the friends.
What Works
The book is hilarious and heartbreaking all at once. It’s about life and living it. And it’s classic Backman: funny without being goofy, deep without trying too hard. He leans into repetitions... letting the characters ramble, somehow finding a way to punch your emotions out.
Would you like some powerful quotes from the book? Check Fredrik Backman’s My Friends quotes
It doesn’t have twists, not in conventional terms at least. But it does have lots of secrets, lost tales that might remind you of your own younger self. Your own friends.
It’s emotionally reflective, soaked in nostalgia. Even secondary characters feel deeply human, like voices from your own past. At points, the story made me so sentimental that I started missing school friends that I didn’t have.
By the time it ends, you won’t want to let these people go. Somehow, Backman makes each of them a part of your life.
What Falls Short
The pacing may feel slow at times. This My Friends book has moments where the story wanders, conversations loop, and not much seems to happen. But honestly? That’s part of the charm. The slowness feels intentional... as if Backman wants you to go into your own memories.
Who Should Read It
My Friends is for those readers who enjoy slow, slice-of-life literary fiction. It’s ideal for those who enjoy character-driven stories with a slow, immersive pace. If you’re drawn to stories where not much happens, but everything changes, Backman’s My Friends is worth your time. And probably, it’s also for artists.
Final Thoughts
My Friends is the kind of novel that stays with you, not because it shouts, but because it whispers about long lost life. It’s about being young, being chaotic, being held together by others. If you want a book with heavy, twisty climax, this isn’t that.
Nothing is quite expressed in the book. But everything is felt. Every emotion. Backman hits deep. My Friends book hits somewhere deep. And for a while, it hurts.
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