Author: Fredrik Backman
Year published: 2025
Category: Adult fiction
Pages: 448 pages
Rating: 4 out of 5
Location: (my 2025 Google Reading map): Sweden
Summary: Most people don’t even notice them—three tiny figures sitting at the end of a long pier in the corner of one of the most famous paintings in the world. Most people think it’s just a depiction of the sea. But Louisa, an aspiring artist herself, knows otherwise, and she is determined to find out the story of these three enigmatic figures.
Twenty-five years earlier, in a distant seaside town, a group of teenagers find refuge from their bruising home lives by spending long summer days on an abandoned pier, telling silly jokes, sharing secrets, and committing small acts of rebellion. These lost souls find in each other a reason to get up each morning, a reason to dream, a reason to love.
Out of that summer emerges a transcendent work of art, a painting that will unexpectedly be placed into eighteen-year-old Louisa’s care. She embarks on a surprise-filled cross-country journey to learn how the painting came to be and to decide what to do with it. The closer she gets to the painting’s birthplace, the more nervous she becomes about what she’ll find. Louisa is proof that happy endings don’t always take the form we expect in this stunning testament to the transformative, timeless power of friendship and art.
Review: Fredrik Backman does it again. I've really enjoyed his previous books that I've read (links are to my reviews: BearTown; Anxious People; Us Against You, and The Answer is No) though BearTown and The Answer is No are still my favorites.
Backman really captures friendships of different types in this book and infuses those friendships with love. The three original boys--the artist, Joar, and Ted run wild as teenagers; what a great way to grow up! Their lives are not easy, but they support one another, have fun, love one another unabashedly, and experience trauma.
The artist and Louisa have a fleeting but meaningful acquaintance born out of her love of his art. His painting brought her joy and warmth for years, and painting with him brings her deep meaning. Teaming up with Ted leads Louisa to experience a life she's never known and brings him joy (eventually) as well.
This novel is slower than many of Backman's previous ones, but I was pulled into the characters and the relationships from page one.
Challenges for which this counts:
- 20 Books of Summer
- Big Summer Book (448 pages
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