Fredrik Backman

My Friends

Abigail F

And she's particularly angry about rich people buying art, because rich people are the worst sort of adults, and the worst way to vandalize art is actually to put a damn price tag on it. That's why rich adults hate the sort of thing that Louisa paints on the walls of buildings, not because they love walls, but because they hate the fact that there are beautiful things that are free.

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.

Okay Backman, I can see what kind of story this is going to be

But Louisa knows the truth: Fish was murdered by reality. She was suffocated by the claustrophobia of being trapped on this planet, she died of being sad all the time.

You have to know all this about Louisa, otherwise you can't understand what a painting can mean. That there is a speed at which a heart can beat that you can't remember when you've stopped being young. There is art that can be so beautiful that it makes a teenager too big for her body. There is a sort of happiness so overwhelming that it is almost unbearable, your soul seems to kick its way through your bones. You can see a painting, and for a single moment of your life, just for a single breath, you can forget to be afraid. If you've ever experienced that, you know how it feels. If not, there probably isn't any way to explain it. 

Because it isn't a painting of the sea. Only a damn adult would think that. 

Then she turns around, and with her thin pen she draws a tiny fish in red ink on the wall right next to the painting.

Lady, Louisa thinks, if I’d wanted to destroy the painting, this entire building would be ashes by now. I'm insanely good at destroying things, lady. Everyone I love dies.

The postcard is in her backpack, but she doesn't need it anymore, because she will never forget what it was like to see the painting in real life. Because what all the stupid adults think is a painting of water is actually a painting of a fishing pier. It reaches out from one corner, like an outstretched tongue of concrete beneath the sky, and at the far end sit three teenage boys. They are so small that adults hardly ever even notice them. The artist called the painting The One of the Sea, so that's all anyone looks for. The boys in the middle are hiding in plain sight. Who can paint like that? Who can punch the lungs of someone who merely sees three kids hanging on a wall? Who can make you smell the salt water and weep over someone else's childhood?

This is a painting of laughter, and you can only understand that if you’re full of holes, because then laughter is a small treasure.

At the bottom of the painting she saw the artist's signature, and next to it he had drawn tiny, tiny skulls. She would never have known that if she hadn't been able to stand really close to it, just once in her life. No guard would be able to beat that out of her memory even if they tried, because now she has skulls in her whole heart.

I love when you is used, bring me into it. Even in a minor way. I’m already committed to these boys. 

And that summer twenty-five years ago? They saw death in those weeks, they were chased and assaulted, they experienced more violence than than the people at that art auction twenty-five years later would experience in their whole lives. You aren't supposed to have any sort of future at all if you grow up that way, you certainly aren't supposed to end up a world-famous artist, but one day that's exactly what will happen to one of those teenagers. Because in an ugly place, he was born with so much beauty inside him that it was like an act of rebellion. In a world full of sledgehammers, his art was a declaration of war.

"I sometimes think," she whispers to the postcard, "that the artist who painted all that must have been in so much pain, but he must also have been the world's happiest person. It's like he must have felt every single feeling inside himself all at the same time, and it must have been almost unbearable, because otherwise no one would be able to paint like that. You know?"

To love art so fully, to embrace and study and know art and an artist style so deeply so the whole point. Not the over consumption of consuming for the sake of it, the aesthetic of it, but to consume in a way that helps us feel human and connected and seen in a world of dumb rich adults. 

People think it's a painting of the sea, but it's actually a painting of them. And those kids...they're in all the artist's paintings. He never painted them again, but if you know they're there...you can sort of feel them everywhere anyway.

"Life is long, Louisa. Everyone will tell you that it's short, but they're lying. It's a long, long life.”

Only his friends would ever understand what a miracle it was, not that the painting became famous but that it was ever finished at all. That something so great came out of a boy who thought so little of himself.

But art? What the hell did he know about art?

The artist didn't know it then, but that was how he would eventually paint Joar in the picture: his outline blurred, as if you were always on the point of losing him. In the fullness of time the artist would find a way to paint laughter, make everything beautiful, because that was how he wanted to remember those days when they were fourteen. Because there was beauty too.

The artist would remember being fourteen as feeling like he was always homesick, because he realized as an adult that that was what the emptiness in his chest was: some of us are born in the wrong place, the whole of our childhood is like being shipwrecked on a desert island, we ache with homesickness without knowing what home is yet. That's all childhood friends are, people stuck on the same island. If you find a single one of them, you can cope with almost anything.

Joar didn't know how to whisper, You can paint whatever the hell you ike, as long as you paint, Tm just scared I’ll lose you if you don’t. The artist had no words either, because he didn't know how to explain to Joar that his anxiety made him feel like he was drowning. That he was so scared that if he held on to his friends' hands, he would drag them down into the darkness with him.

Continuing this style of foreshadowing but he is a famous artist, will he not “live forever” through his art? Or does backman not consider that the same?

When, eventually, they were floating on their backs next to each other. the artist turned to Joar and asked: 

“Did you mean what you said? That you don't think we'll all be alive when we're grown-up?" 

It was a cloudless, wind-free day, the sea hugged them, and Joar smiled back sadly: 

"You'll be alive. Not all the rest of us, but you'll be alive, because you're going to live forever."

Is this too much to highlight? I don’t care. I appreciate the concepts, the change of approach to art and life and love after just reading the goldfinch and its pessimism. 

They don't want to see anyone who's ill, they don't even want to think about illness, and if they absolutely have to, they sigh and say things like: "Oh, it reminds you not to take life for granted!"

Not to be mean, but healthy people aren't quite right in the head, the artist thinks. Surely taking life for granted is the whole point of being here, because what else are we doing? We're a bunch of lonely apes on a rock in the universe, our breath consists of eighty percent nitrogen, twenty percent oxygen, and one hundred percent anxiety. The only thing we can take for granted is that everyone we have ever met and everyone we have ever known and everyone we have ever loved will die. So how great must our imaginations be for us to even summon up the enthusiasm to get out of bed each morning? Endless! Imagination is the only thing that stops us from thinking about death every second. And when we aren't thinking? Oh, those are all our very best moments, when we're wasting our lives. It's an act of magnificent rebellion to do meaningless things, to waste time, to swim and drink soda and sleep late. To be silly and frivolous, to laugh at stupid little jokes and tell stupid little stories. Or to paint big paintings, the biggest you can manage, and to try to learn to whisper in color. To look for a way to show other people: this was me, these were my humans, these were our farts. These were our bodies, and they were small, far too small, because they couldn’t contain all our love. 

Backman is an auto-read author for me at this point. While this isn’t my favorite of his works, I know it’s a story that will stay with me for many years to come. 

A story that is easy to read, highly engaging, with fun characters, Backman looks at the meaning of art, what it means to be human, life, friendship and all the ways to tell someone you love them. 

emotionally, this was a 5 star read. I rated it 4.5 because I do have some minor complaints on the narrative. Some could say the messages were beaten to death but I think the way they were presented in an overlapping way that worked well within the non linear nature of the story line.

TW: death of loved ones, domestic violence, abuse of children, mention of sexual assault, overdose, suicidal ideation

Backman is an auto-read author for me at this point. While this isn’t my favorite of his works, I know it’s a story that will stay with me for many years to come. 

A story that is easy to read, highly engaging, with fun characters, Backman looks at the meaning of art, what it means to be human, life, friendship and all the ways to tell someone you love them. 

emotionally, this was a 5 star read. I rated it 4.5 because I do have some minor complaints on the narrative. Some could say the messages were beaten to death but I think the way they were presented in an overlapping way that worked well within the non linear nature of the story line.

Not a cozy read, but a good read. 

TW: death of loved ones, domestic violence, abuse of children, mention of sexual assault, overdose, suicidal ideation

My Friends

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