by Fredrik Backman, 2025
This was disappointing. I’ve loved everything he’s written, and I did love the ending of this book, but it took a while to get through. It’s about 4 friends who live by the sea and have the crappiest parents ever. Some of the parents are so abusive, it’s terrible, terrible. And one of the boys (C.Jat, but KimKim is his real name) is an amazing artist. He becomes famous because another of the boys (Joar) makes sure he enters a contest for young painters. It takes forever to find out each little bit of the story – most of it is told while Ted, another of the friends, 25 years later is on a train with an 18 year-old orphan, Louisa, who fell in love with the painting that made C.Jat famous – The One of the Sea. Finally, finally, everything comes together in the last couple of chapters, but getting there was a real slog at times. Maybe I will appreciate it in a few days, though. The 4 friends are 14 years old and most of the story is about their lives that summer. They have so much fun out on the pier. The painting is of the sea and the pier, and the artists 3 friends on the pier, which only a few people actually notice. When Louisa finds a postcard of this painting years later, she treasures it. When the painting is going to be sold at auction, she makes sure she is there to see it in real life. The artist is now a grown man, famous, and dying. Louisa literally runs into him in the alley behind the museum, escaping the security guards. He looks like a homeless man with a cat. He’s actually just in the alley waiting for his painting to be sold for millions. His friend, Ted, who loves the artist – he’s gay – is actually buying the painting before the artist dies. When the artist meets Louisa in the alley, she’s an abused, about to turn 18 years old, genius artist like himself, he makes sure she is the one who Ted gives the painting to after he dies.
The four friends that summer are Ali (a wild girl), Joar (whose father is a violent drunk who physically abuses he and his mother so badly, so constantly, it’s amazing they haven’t died. Joar plans to kill his father that summer, before his father kills his beloved mother.) Also, Ted (a young, timid, weak, frightened gay boy), and the artist, who is also physically abused by his father.
One of the things that bothered me about the book is he never tells where this town by the sea is located – what continent, what country, what town. It’s probably Sweden since that is where Backman is from, but they go swimming in the sea, and I can’t imagine Sweden’s sea is ever warm enough to swim in! He also doesn’t name the artist’s real name (Kim) until the book is almost over. There are also hints of homosexuality in both the artist (for Joar), Ted (for the artist), and Louisa (for her dear, dead friend, Fish), but thankfully, nothing explicit. Lately, his books have gay characters – like in the Hockey book – the main hero hockey player is gay.
There is a love story between Ali and Joar, girl and boy, but they are so immature and hostile to one another – he presents them as constantly nagging and fighting one another. That got old. There are lots of fart jokes and slapstick type antics. I found those irritating, not funny. And the abusiveness, the constant fears, were tough.
But, the ending was good. Ali ends up moving away that summer and becoming a really good surfer. She ends up paddling out one day at the age of 18, never to be found again. Joar lives a long life as a single man – he loved only Ali. His abusive Dad gets hit in the head with a steel beam at his job on the harbor – actually on the same day that Joar was planning to murder him. He and his mom end up taking care of his dad the rest of his life. He changed and they both forgave him. Ted ends up a high school teacher, a really good one, and he ends up being a father to Louisa. Louisa becomes another rich and famous artist. One day, she runs into a young girl who is just like she was – poor and hopeless, but full of talent. You know Louisa is going to take her under her wing the way Ted did for Louisa. And the good continues. Nice ending.