Ask a Bookseller: ‘My Friends’ by Fredrik Backman

On The Thread’s Ask a Bookseller series, we talk to independent booksellers all over the country to find out what books they’re most excited about right now. Lori Virelli of Harvey's Tales of Geneva, Ill., has eagerly been awaiting the release this week of Fredrik Backman’s new novel “My Friends.” The Swedish author of “A Man Called Ove,” the “Beartown” hockey series, “Anxious People” and others offers a new novel about friendship and found family. Eighteen-year-old Louisa, an aspiring painter without a lot of support in her life, is obsessed with a painting. It’s a famous seascape, but what draws her are three figures sitting on a pier in the distance. Louisa sets out on a journey to find the artist and the people in that painting. As Louisa crosses paths with people along the way, we learn their backstories. In typical Backman fashion, characters aren’t heroes or villains but complex characters who always have an opportunity to show they can do better next time. “It’s all about storytelling. Found family. People having a connection through art and through stories,” Virelli says. “And ‘your people’ don’t always look like the people you live next to or work next to. It’s just a lovely, redemptive story of how people find each other.”