Backman is a 44 year old Swede who has written 12 novels. He has one of the shortest Wikipedia bios I’ve ever seen—no awards, no fellowships, no teaching positions.  He is just a terrific writer!

I loved his “Anxious People” a laugh-out-loud story about a robbery gone wrong, and this book is even better.  Any book that makes me decide to turn on the light at 3:30AM and read is worth savoring, and this novel also had me in tears for much of the final third.

Ostensibly, it’s the story of Louisa, an 18 year old much-abused foster child who has lost her best friend to a drug overdose, and her collision with the eponymous friends, Kimkim (aka C.JAT),  Joar, Ali, and Ted.  The narrator takes us back and forth in time from the summer 25 years ago when the four friends were teenagers to the present when Ted buys the incredibly expensive painting by C.JAT at auction and gives it to Louisa who had been in love with it via a postcard for years.

After Ted gives Louisa her multi-million dollar painting, Louisa decides to hang out with him, a fraught situation for both given their phobias, fears, anxieties, and neuroses.  As they train north to the sea and Ted’s original home town (we never do learn what country they’re in!), Ted slowly shares the story of the summer of the four friends while Louisa finally allows herself to trust him.

The book is a brilliant and often hilariously funny story about childhood, friendship, parenting, abuse, poverty, living and dying, and over all of that, art and love.  Libraries and books play a prominent role, but the plot pivots around the story of these four teenagers and their screwed up families.  The quotable lines keep coming and mark the book as a cut above the usual bildungsroman.  Art is referred to as ‘a moment, a reason, and coping with being alive.‘   The contingency and accidentalness of life is a prominent theme: “…it takes so little for a life to take adifferent direction. Change weighs nothing.”   Backman’s observations about parenting are superb as is his portrait of these friendships.

Reading and finishing the last 100 pages of a book at 3AM in tears is solid grounds for recommending it.  I heartily do so!