My Friends: A Novel

Fredrik Backman returns with a novel about four teenagers whose friendship creates a bond powerful enough to change a stranger's life twenty-five years later. Louisa, an aspiring artist, becomes fascinated by three small figures in one of the world's most famous paintings—details most people overlook. Twenty-five years earlier, a group of teenagers in a distant seaside town found refuge from difficult home lives by spending summer days on an abandoned pier. They told jokes, shared secrets, and committed small acts of rebellion, finding in each other reasons to get up each morning, to dream, and to love. From that summer emerges a painting that unexpectedly comes into Louisa's care at eighteen. She embarks on a cross-country journey to learn how the painting came to be and to decide what to do with it. As she gets closer to the painting's birthplace, her nervousness grows about what she will discover. The novel explores how friendship and art can transform lives in unexpected ways.