Depth of perspective

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 24/05/2025 (448 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Tomorrow — it’s a simple enough word meaning the day after today, at some future time.

Unless you’re one of a group of young teenagers, saying goodnight to each other as they head home to lives ranging from sadness to violent assault. Then, the word tomorrow is a symbol of hope, an affirmation from each one that they will be there the next day, that they will support each other and fill the day with the friendship, love and trust that they so desperately need.

Swedish novelist Fredrik Backman’s My Friends alternates between two time periods. The first is the summer before four friends turn 15; it’s the last time they enjoy spending sunny days swimming off a pier, and one of them goes on to paint a picture of that idyllic time that makes him a world-famous artist. The second is 25 years later, when a troubled 18-year-old named Louisa comes into possession of the painting, which she has loved for years, and the friendship of one of the four, and embarks on an unusual cross-country trip back to the small town where it all started.

Louisa fell in love with the painting The One of the Sea — depicting the sky, the pier and three teenagers in the water — when she was six or seven and living in one of her foster homes; she took a postcard version off the fridge door and carried it with her ever after. It means everything to her, “a sort of happiness so overwhelming it’s almost unbearable,” Backman writes.

When she learns the painting will be on display at an art auction, she sneaks in to see the real thing and becomes angry at the rich art collectors and their misunderstanding of the painting, “Because it isn’t a painting of the sea. Only a damn adult would think that.”

Louisa recognizes it as a painting of laughter, love and hope, the ephemeral qualities that made it and the painter famous.

Backman enjoys a few sly digs at the so-called art lovers, such as how the old-money people don’t like the new-money people: “The only things that should be new are sports cars and hip joints.”

The alternating chapters build on each other as the story unfolds in two sets of real time: the four teenagers’ summer and the genesis of the painting, and the recollections of Ted, one of the four, as he recounts the story a quarter-century later under questioning by Louisa.

Backman’s 2012 debut novel A Man Called Ove spent 42 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and spawned two movie versions. His subsequent books such as Beartown, Us Against You and Anxious People confirm his role as a writer with a knack for tales that are warm-hearted and heartbreaking, with characters you can’t help but root for (often against what seem to be insurmountable odds) and for a sly humour (even if it does sometimes include farting).

A powerful storyteller, Backman has done it again, creating a tale of messy life that balances loss and grief with joy and hope, and especially the power of friendship, that tugs at your emotions and, somehow, makes sense despite it all.

The tale’s many twists and turns are worth the trip; suffice to say the painting is lost, recovered and… well, why spoil it?

Chris Smith is a Winnipeg writer.