“My Friends” by Fredrik Backman
This is a brilliantly-written novel about several broken lives that was captured in a single painting. While the painting itself looks very simple at first (an ocean and 3 kids at the beach sitting and interacting), as the book progresses we learn one new detail at a time that gives more depth to the story.
No spoiler for the actual story, and not even a discussion about the construction of the novel because the best parts of this book are the many plot twists. But let’s just say it reminds me of the movie Slumdog Millionaire, where the answers to the questions in the game show happen to be the contestant’s brutal life experience.
But the difference is, in this novel it’s the other way around. Kind of. The simple painting is the grand summary, and through the narrative we get to discover the small details gradually: the backstory of each kid, the nature of their friendship, whose favourite were the flowers in the painting, why the specific birds, even the story behind a colour in the painting that became world renown; until at the end of the novel we get to see the big picture of why the painting is so damn valuable for the protagonists.
This novel is also like the French movie Jeux d’enfants (Love me if you dare) where in the movie the 2 protagonists don’t really care about anything else in the world except for each others’ inside jokes. This is how the 14 year-olds in this novel kind of behave, because all they got were each others.
However, this is not like the movie Seabiscuit, where several broken lives join forces to create a success story. No, this is more of a survival story among individuals who are living their respective harsh lives – including the side characters – where they rely with one another in the middle of the darkness.
It is such a great portrayal of how a deep meaning of friendship can look like when taken into extreme circumstances; showing that art is a coincidence, love is chaos, and sacrifice is the purest form of comradery.
THE CHAOS THEORY 