o this is for you Ove fans (for you “Otto” fans, shush, the grownups are talking). My Friends is (as hinted at) is written by Fredrik Bachman, author of A Man Called Ove (a personal favorite). And in it, the author hits another one out of the park.

My Friends begins with a troubled young girl moving through an art show, moving slowly towards a certain painting, a massively expensive one. With cans of spray paint in her backpack and determination in her eye, she slips past the rich people, ducks under the rope and ….

See how this one catches you?

It turns out that the painting (that appears to be under threat) is the first one a world-famous artist painted for an art show in his early years. It shows three kids – you can barely see them and most casual viewers miss them – at the end of a pier, a perfect day for these fourteen-year-olds, the sky sunny, the sea infinite. It is that one moment in young lives where the moment is perfect and friendship is eternal.

Later, while on foot being pursued by museum guards, the girl inadvertently meets one of the “kids” (now in his mid-thirties). And then a second is encountered. After this, it’s just a series of recounting of their young (hard) lives together and the young girl’s current adventure as she travels with one of the “kids” across Europe, returning this this pier, to discover life, to consider art, and to find her place in the world.

Now, while I loved the novel, there were some minor blemishes. I know (from my own verbal storytelling) that it’s hard to stretch a tale longer than five minutes (much less several days on a train). In that, our understanding changes again and again of what happened, that there was a death, maybe two, that nothing was as it seems. And that’s perfectly fine, but to me, I felt it was almost too clever, that we should have gotten to the crux of the tale much sooner. In the end, I don’t know if I really trusted anything the author said.

Don’t get me wrong; it was a great book. I suggest it highly and might consider if for my year-end wrap up of recommendations. So have a look.

>>>AND MY BOOKS, DOWN THIS LINK!<<<