Book Club Questions for My Friends by Fredrik Backman

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Book club questions for My Friends by Fredrik Backman offer an in-depth look at this novel, exploring the themes of friendship, grief, and found family.

I started My Friends back in June, and I finally finished the novel in September. While I never take that long to read a story, I had to take breaks from reading it.

Overall, I had a very up-and-down relationship with My Friends. I found it equally impactful, but also exhausting. There were lines I wanted to save and savor, and yet, there were moments I was ready to speed up.

Despite all the key themes—found family, everlasting friendship, overcoming grief, and more—I didn’t feel a big connection to the story or the characters. In many ways, I was ready for the story to wrap up.

Maybe it was the timing, as I tried reading it during the summer months, but I wasn’t as enthused by this story as others. But there were still moments I very much enjoyed. So I have mixed feelings about this one.

Let me know your thoughts about My Friends in the comment section below!

The Synopsis

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.

Book Club Questions for My Friends

1. Have you read any of Fredrik Backman’s previous books? How does My Friends rank compared to his other stories?
2. The book jumps back and forth in timelines, with multiple perspectives. Why do you feel the author decided to tell this story in this way?
3. Was there a character you connected with, and why?
4. The novel details the story behind the most famous painting in the world, The One of the Sea. Why did this painting inspire such a following? How was it widely misunderstood by the general public?
5. Why was Louisa so drawn to the painting? What does it say about Louisa that she was able to decipher the true meaning of the painting, while others did not?
6. What was your impression of her encounter with the artist, Kimkim? How did this set the stage for what was to come?
7. What are your thoughts about Louisa as a whole? How did she change from the beginning of the novel to the end?
8. The book is about friendship, broken homes, found family, and finding “your people.” Why did Kimkim, Joar, Ted, and Ali share such a strong connection?
9. Why did Kimkim choose to draw this painting? What did it really represent to him and his friends?
10. This is quite a dark book in many ways, highlighting abuse, trauma, depression, violence, and death. Why do you feel there was such a focus on those areas, and how did it influence the reading experience for you?
11. Let’s talk about the impact of Christian, the jaintor who helped Kimkim see his potential, on the story as a whole?
12. What finally prompted Ted and Louisa to bond?
13. What are your thoughts on the ending? What happens next for all the main characters?
14. Is there a piece of art that you enjoy, similar to how so many loved Kimkim’s painting?
15. Did you highlight any passages or scenes? If so, who would like to share those?

Additional Recommendations

I hope you enjoyed the book club questions for My Friends! Here are some more recommendations, along with links to book club questions.

Looking at real estate isn’t usually a life-or-death situation, but an apartment open house becomes just that when a failed bank robber bursts in and takes a group of strangers hostage. The captives include a recently retired couple who relentlessly hunt down fixer-uppers to avoid the painful truth that they can’t fix their own marriage. There’s a wealthy bank director who has been too busy to care about anyone else and a young couple who are about to have their first child but can’t seem to agree on anything. Add to the mix an eighty-seven-year-old woman who has lived long enough not to be afraid of someone waving a gun in her face, a flustered but still-ready-to-make-a-deal real estate agent, and a mystery man who has locked himself in the apartment’s only bathroom, and you’ve got the worst group of hostages in the world.

Each of them carries a lifetime of grievances, hurts, secrets, and passions that are ready to boil over. None of them is entirely who they appear to be. And all of them—the bank robber included—desperately crave some sort of rescue. As the authorities and the media surround the premises, these reluctant allies will reveal surprising truths about themselves and set in motion a chain of events so unexpected that even they can hardly explain what happens next.

It’s been a minute—or five years—since Jordan Vargas last saw his college friends, and twenty-eight years since their graduation from Berkeley when their adult lives officially began. Now Jordan, Jordy, Naomi, Craig, and Marielle find themselves at the brink of a new decade, with all the responsibilities of adulthood, yet no closer to having their lives figured out. Though not for a lack of trying. Over the years they’ve reunited in Big Sur to honor a decades-old pact to throw each other living “funerals,” celebrations to remind themselves that life is worth living—that their lives mean something, to one another if not to themselves.

But this reunion is different. They’re not gathered as they were to bolster Marielle as her marriage crumbled, to lift Naomi after her parents died, or to intervene when Craig pleaded guilty to art fraud. This time, Jordan is sitting on a secret that will upend their pact.

Happy reading!