Lauren
4.5
“I love you and I believe in you.”
My Friends is a hard book to summarize. At its simplest, it’s about Louisa, a young, brave, energetic teenage girl learning how people with difficult lives can have profound impacts. It’s about hope and grief, love and the refusal of loss. It’s about the closeness that is so pure only kids can achieve it. It was beautiful.
I must admit, the way I felt about this book changed drastically throughout. Without giving spoilers, I’m going to try to describe why that is, but I do find it difficult. At the start, I was optimistic. The story had a great opener and although it was possibly predictable, that early twist outside the auction surprised me. (This is where I also admit that I rarely read the synopsis of a book before reading it, so I was very misled about who would end up being our main characters. My bad.) Every time I hear someone discuss Backman’s books, I hear that the writing is beautiful but also incredibly simple. I actually fully agree with this, but also, depending on perspective, there is not a soul out there that can convince me this writing style is not explicitly made for adults who read Junie B. Jones. The only evidence I’ll leave for this is this quote from the beginning of the book (around page 10): “it turns out, to his horror, that Louisa isn’t afraid of index fingers, because she isn’t an elevator button, so she merely replied quietly: ‘I don’t work here.’”
As the book progressed and I learned Louisa and Ted were our main characters, I enjoyed how fleshed out they were. This book really isn’t about the plot, but the people and the way people impact other people. While I enjoy this, this is where my interest dipped. Let me preface this with saying I actually really loved the melancholic tone mixed with a hidden thread of hope throughout the story, but I can’t say I love a story in which everyone’s lives just suck. I get that, in a way, that’s the point, but I almost feel like it would have been more compelling if one of the friend’s couldn’t quite imagine what their friends were facing. I think that happens a lot (with kids and adults) and instead of everyone having different levels of awful, it would have been nice if one of them came from a completely average home.
Somewhere after half way but before the final 100-150 pages, I was feeling a little tired of it. It was odd because I wanted to know what happened next, but it just felt like there was no reprieve from the same thing over and over again.
So, to summarize, this book started incredible, then dipped down. It was never bad, but at that point I was thinking it would be a three star. Fine but ultimately forgettable.
Then that last stretch happened. I was reading this horribly sad book, but never once was I truly sad. I expected to cry throughout this book, but it wasn’t until the end that I did, on and off, and then consistently for the final two or three chapters. Funnily enough, it wasn’t the sad things in this book that made me cry (okay, one sad thing, but that’s a major spoiler so I won’t say it but for those who have read the book, it has to do with someone who left them long ago). It was these moments of kindness, of love and community, of family and the terrifying reality of hoping that got me over and over again. It was small lines. At first I just felt myself getting a little emotional, but those lines kept coming until they built moments that I think most people would have to feel something. I don’t believe it raising my rating just because a book has a good ending, but I do when the ending makes the middle make more sense and the book can make me feel something deeply it feels like I’ll carry some semblance of it forever (even if this isn’t truly going to happen).
My quick thoughts on the characters
Louisa: what a star character. She is brave and kind and terrified and has so much to offer. She is a lot like the artist, though with far more drive to do something with herself. I feared when we learned about Fish early on that was going to be the thing that held her back, but it didn’t. If anything, the love for her friend propelled her into grander life with more friends.
Ted: I loved this man. He was incredibly related. He, too, has been hurt by his losses, but watching how he and Louisa interact and truly impact each other’s lives was beautiful. There was no one else who could have helped her (and us) take this journey. And he got just as much from it.
The artist: I don’t think many people will related to him, but I do. Like him, I was greatly unhappy at fourteen. It really is hard to be a kid, and when people don’t understand your differences, life can be even more difficult. Watching the cycle of his life was heartbreaking and beautiful, despite him actually not being the main character (not even in the spoke story)
Joar: If you’ve met enough people, you know this kid. You might not think you do, but you do, and he was written to beautifully. He is loud and crude and pulls all the attention to himself in order to save his friends. He is unwaveringly loyal, and though he doesn’t often have to right words, his love is painfully obvious in every last thing he did.
Ali: I’ll be honest, it took me a moment to warm up to her. I felt like the story had tricked me when she was introduced (silly, I know), but she’s the sort of character that finds her way into your heart without you even realizing she did so.
4.5
“I love you and I believe in you.”
My Friends is a hard book to summarize. At its simplest, it’s about Louisa, a young, brave, energetic teenage girl learning how people with difficult lives can have profound impacts. It’s about hope and grief, love and the refusal of loss. It’s about the closeness that is so pure only kids can achieve it. It was beautiful.
I must admit, the way I felt about this book changed drastically throughout. Without giving spoilers, I’m going to try to describe why that is, but I do find it difficult. At the start, I was optimistic. The story had a great opener and although it was possibly predictable, that early twist outside the auction surprised me. (This is where I also admit that I rarely read the synopsis of a book before reading it, so I was very misled about who would end up being our main characters. My bad.) Every time I hear someone discuss Backman’s books, I hear that the writing is beautiful but also incredibly simple. I actually fully agree with this, but also, depending on perspective, there is not a soul out there that can convince me this writing style is not explicitly made for adults who read Junie B. Jones. The only evidence I’ll leave for this is this quote from the beginning of the book (around page 10): “it turns out, to his horror, that Louisa isn’t afraid of index fingers, because she isn’t an elevator button, so she merely replied quietly: ‘I don’t work here.’”
As the book progressed and I learned Louisa and Ted were our main characters, I enjoyed how fleshed out they were. This book really isn’t about the plot, but the people and the way people impact other people. While I enjoy this, this is where my interest dipped. Let me preface this with saying I actually really loved the melancholic tone mixed with a hidden thread of hope throughout the story, but I can’t say I love a story in which everyone’s lives just suck. I get that, in a way, that’s the point, but I almost feel like it would have been more compelling if one of the friend’s couldn’t quite imagine what their friends were facing. I think that happens a lot (with kids and adults) and instead of everyone having different levels of awful, it would have been nice if one of them came from a completely average home.
Somewhere after half way but before the final 100-150 pages, I was feeling a little tired of it. It was odd because I wanted to know what happened next, but it just felt like there was no reprieve from the same thing over and over again.
So, to summarize, this book started incredible, then dipped down. It was never bad, but at that point I was thinking it would be a three star. Fine but ultimately forgettable.
Then that last stretch happened. I was reading this horribly sad book, but never once was I truly sad. I expected to cry throughout this book, but it wasn’t until the end that I did, on and off, and then consistently for the final two or three chapters. Funnily enough, it wasn’t the sad things in this book that made me cry (okay, one sad thing, but that’s a major spoiler so I won’t say it but for those who have read the book, it has to do with someone who left them long ago). It was these moments of kindness, of love and community, of family and the terrifying reality of hoping that got me over and over again. It was small lines. At first I just felt myself getting a little emotional, but those lines kept coming until they built moments that I think most people would have to feel something. I don’t believe it raising my rating just because a book has a good ending, but I do when the ending makes the middle make more sense and the book can make me feel something deeply it feels like I’ll carry some semblance of it forever (even if this isn’t truly going to happen).
My quick thoughts on the characters
Louisa: what a star character. She is brave and kind and terrified and has so much to offer. She is a lot like the artist, though with far more drive to do something with herself. I feared when we learned about Fish early on that was going to be the thing that held her back, but it didn’t. If anything, the love for her friend propelled her into grander life with more friends.
Ted: I loved this man. He was incredibly related. He, too, has been hurt by his losses, but watching how he and Louisa interact and truly impact each other’s lives was beautiful. There was no one else who could have helped her (and us) take this journey. And he got just as much from it.
The artist: I don’t think many people will related to him, but I do. Like him, I was greatly unhappy at fourteen. It really is hard to be a kid, and when people don’t understand your differences, life can be even more difficult. Watching the cycle of his life was heartbreaking and beautiful, despite him actually not being the main character (not even in the spoke story)
Joar: If you’ve met enough people, you know this kid. You might not think you do, but you do, and he was written to beautifully. He is loud and crude and pulls all the attention to himself in order to save his friends. He is unwaveringly loyal, and though he doesn’t often have to right words, his love is painfully obvious in every last thing he did.
Ali: I’ll be honest, it took me a moment to warm up to her. I felt like the story had tricked me when she was introduced (silly, I know), but she’s the sort of character that finds her way into your heart without you even realizing she did so.