“My Friends: by Fredrik Backman

c.2025, Atria $29.99 448 pages

There were five in your pile.

Or maybe twelve or thirty or eight, it didn’t matter. When you were a kid, you’d happily spend the summer re-reading comic books on the porch, riding your bike, or just goofing off. That’s how it was: one-point-three seconds after school let out until the last shred of vacation was over, as in “My Friends” by Fredrik Backman, the summer was yours.

Louisa didn’t go to the art gallery to cause trouble.

Yes, she was aging out of the foster system and had nothing to lose, and she had cans of spray paint in her backpack. She only wanted to see the painting. But when a rich woman noticed her and screamed, and a lumbering guard chased her out of the gallery and into an alley, Louisa got much more than a scare.

Fleeing, she bumped into a homeless man who ultimately admitted that he was dying. Also, he told Louisa that he wasn’t homeless, that he was really the artist who’d done the very painting she’d gone to the gallery to see, the painting she’d loved since she was small and her mother abandoned her. Then he proved it.

It was him, the artist, standing right in front of her.

But before she could think, the security guard caught up and Louisa had to run again.

If he had to be honest, Ted was always in love with the artist and he’d known it for years. He actually said “I love you” the summer they were fourteen and the artist painted the picture of the sea, the last endless summer they’d all had together, a summer of funerals, laughter, and long days at the pier, away from adults.

Now the artist was ailing. Ted knew their time together was running out, just as he knew he’d fulfill the artist’s final request, no matter what. This girl, the artist said, was “one of us,” and Ted had to find her, hoping that he wouldn’t have to tell her why…

Before you start “My Friends,” place your right hand over the left side of your chest and protect your heart. Because author Fredrik Backman is going to tear it out of you, slam it on the table and put it through a meat grinder.

Yeah, it’s that kinda book.

And yet, there are times when the story here lags a bit. It can be oh-so-briefly silly, but you can trust that the turns of plot and the exquisite use of metaphors greatly overshadow any scuffs you might spot while reading. Indeed, Backman is the master of keeping readers eagerly enthralled by eking out details in his novels, spinning tales like conversation, doubling- and tripling-back with breathtaking asides, gaspworthy almost-forgots, and layers upon layers of story. Wrap nostalgia around it, and you’ve got fan-pleasing goodness.

So why are you waiting? If you’re an avid fan already or if you need a novel about love, summertime, and adolescence, this is it. Find “My Friends” and ignore your TBR pile.

You won’t need it.