Is there an audiobook of My Friends?

Yes. My Friends has an Audible audiobook edition, narrated by Marin Ireland.

How long is the My Friends audiobook?

The My Friends audiobook runs 13 hr 22 min.

Is My Friends on Kindle Unlimited?

No. My Friends was not included with Kindle Unlimited when we last checked on August 27, 2026.

My Friends by Fredrik Backman book cover for the Book of the Day literary fiction book review

Our score

4.4/ 5

Excellent

Listen to My Friends free with an Audible trial Narrator, runtime & our audio review

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EDITION PUBLISHEDMay 2025

Genres

Fiction Literary Fiction Contemporary

Themes

Friendship as a substitute familyArt and who gets remembered in itGrowing up in a home that hurtsGrief carried across decades

My Friends

Name: My Friends
Price: 14.99 USD
Availability: InStock
Author: Fredrik Backman

Fredrik Backman

Fredrik Backman's My Friends follows Louisa, eighteen and broke, as she carries a famous painting across the country to find out who the three small figures at the end of its pier really were. Twenty-five years earlier, four teenagers spent a summer on that pier surviving their families. Warm, funny, structurally restless literary fiction from the author of A Man Called Ove.

The Review

Our take

Backman writes the way somebody tells you a story at a kitchen table well past midnight, doubling back, breaking off to explain a person you have not met yet, insisting he is getting to the point. For the first hundred pages of My Friends that habit is genuinely disorienting, because the book keeps cutting between Louisa in the present and four teenagers on a pier twenty-five years earlier, and it holds back the connective tissue on purpose. That stretch tests you. I nearly set it down. Then the summer sections start to close around each other, and it becomes clear the withholding was doing work all along.

The pier is the best thing in the novel, and Backman barely describes it. What he gives you instead is what it holds. Kids whose homes hurt, sitting in the one place nobody can reach them, repeating jokes until the jokes stop being funny and turn into a private language only the four of them speak. He is exact about the mechanics of teenage loyalty, the way it comes out sideways as insult and inconvenience and simply showing up again the next day. His teenagers swear too much and love too loudly and are embarrassingly recognizable.

Louisa arrives at eighteen with almost nothing and no expectation that anyone will be kind to her, and Backman resists every chance to sand her down. Her road trip with Ted, who is grieving and no better at conversation than she is, gives the book its warmth without tipping into sentiment, mostly because neither of them can hold a serious moment for long before ruining it on purpose. The art thread could have been mush. It is not. Backman is precise about what making something costs, and about the particular loneliness of being the only person in the room who sees what you see, which is the closest thing here to a thesis.

The length shows. The middle sags, the viewpoint handoffs multiply, and a few characters get a chapter of interior weather the story could live without. Anyone arriving from A Man Called Ove or Anxious People will notice this one is messier and much slower to open up, and the emotional payoff is back-loaded in a way those books never were. It hits harder when it finally comes, which is not the same as arriving on time.

Why you should read

Great if A Man Called Ove made you cry
Great for book clubs that want a long, warm novel
Great if you like stories about art and who makes it
Great for readers drawn to friendship over romance

What to expect

A slow, disorienting first third
Two timelines that take their time meeting
Humor sitting right beside real damage
Many viewpoints across a long book

What stays with me is what the painting turns out to be doing, which is not what a painting in a novel usually does. Backman lets it work as a record rather than a symbol. Proof that four specific kids sat in a specific spot on a specific evening and were happy, and that somebody thought to put them in the corner of the canvas where almost nobody would ever look. He is arguing that being seen properly, once, by people who chose you, can carry a person for decades. Out on that pier he makes it look true.

Reviewed by Avery · How our reviews are written

Our verdict

4.4/ 5

Excellent

Listen to My Friends free with an Audible trial Narrator, runtime & our audio review

Buy on Amazon

As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Prices may vary.

Where to read or listen

Is there an audiobook of My Friends?: Yes. My Friends has an Audible audiobook edition, narrated by Marin Ireland.
Listen to My Friends free with an Audible trial
We earn from qualifying Amazon purchases.
How long is the My Friends audiobook?: The My Friends audiobook runs 13 hr 22 min.
Is My Friends on Kindle Unlimited?: No. My Friends was not included with Kindle Unlimited when we last checked on August 27, 2026.
How much does My Friends cost?: On Amazon: Kindle $14.99, Paperback $14.98, Hardcover $14.93. Prices as of September 4, 2026 at 12:20 AM EDT and may change.

Filed underLiterary Fiction Contemporary Browse the archive →

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Common questions

What is My Friends about?: Backman writes the way somebody tells you a story at a kitchen table well past midnight, doubling back, breaking off to explain a person you have not met yet, insisting he is getting to the point. For the first hundred pages of My Friends that habit is genuinely disorienting, because the book…
Is My Friends worth reading?: We scored My Friends 4.4 out of 5. Fredrik Backman's My Friends follows Louisa, eighteen and broke, as she carries a famous painting across the country to find out who the three small figures at the end of its pier really were. Twenty-five years earlier, four teenagers spent a summer on that pier surviving their…