My Friends by Fredrik Backman

Published in translation by Atria Books on May 6, 2025

Fredrik Backman has such a gentle sense of humor and writes from such a humane point of view that he might be unique among contemporary authors. My Friends examines life from the perspectives of  four fifteen-year-old friends, from the perspectives of two of the friends after they reach middle age, and from the perspective of a snarky 17-year-old girl on the cusp of adulthood. The story revolves around the last perfect summer than the teenage friends spent together and the effort that one of those friends, now well into adulthood, makes to help the teenage girl.

One of the four friends is now a famous artist who, having nearly reached the age of 40, is about to die. The artist signs his paintings C. Jat but is known throughout the novel as “the artist” or Kimkim. His most famous painting is of the sea — that’s all rich art collectors notice, apart from the price tag — but to Louisa, the 17-year-old, it is a painting of kids on a pier that rich collectors never seem to notice. Louisa loves to draw. She has a postcard of the painting, but she sneaks into an art show where the painting is being sold because she needs to see it in person.

When the police chase her (they assume that she intends to deface the painting with the spray paint in her bag), Louisa hides in an alley next to a homeless bum who kindly misdirects the cops. The bum is quickly revealed as the famous artist when they begin to paint graffiti on an alley wall together.

The artist has been living with Ted, one of the childhood friends. The novel implies that they are lovers but their relationship is built on love regardless of how they might express it. The artist instructs Ted to buy the painting of the sea and give it to Louisa so she can sell it and live a good life as she pursues her own art. Louisa wants to reject the gift because she has always lost everything — including her parents and a best friend who died. She is certain she will lose any money that might come from the sale of the painting.

Ted wants to rid himself of Louisa but his loyalty to the artist compels him to assure that Louisa takes the painting. They continue their argument on a train journey that will eventually take them to the town where Ted, the artist, and their two friends — Joat and Ali — spent their last summer together. Along the way, Ted tells Louisa the story of that summer. The story is about childhood friendships and lasting bonds, but it is also about child abuse and how friends save each other. Some of the story is about death, the ways people process the loss of a friend or family member. And it’s about way in which friends recognize and encourage talents that young people might otherwise be too insecure to pursue.

Backman is given to platitudes. He hits the reader with new ones on nearly every page. “The world is full of miracles, but none greater than how far a young person can be carried by someone else’s belief in them.” “That’s the worst thing about death, that it happens over and over again. That the human body can cry forever.” “Because art is a fragile magic, just like love, and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.” And so on. Some of them are insightful. Some are schmaltzy. Many are redundant. Still, a cheerful author with good intentions can brighten days made dim by the relentless onslaught of insults that passes for discourse in America.

Because the book is crowded with platitudes, it takes some time to tell a simple story. The plot involves Ted’s journey with Louisa to a destination where she can find assistance selling the painting. Each of them tries to abandon the other along the way, but they learn that they are not good at abandoning people. Ted takes a beating — not the first in his life and the reason he doesn’t like to go outside. Louisa shows off her aptitude for theft. As the journey unfolds, Ted tells Louisa about the kids in the painting, all of whom are damaged in some way. Their goal that summer is to make the artist paint something (they execute various schemes so they can acquire paints and a canvas) because they know that unchaining his potential is the only way he will survive the harsh reality of life.

The platitudes add up to a theme. Backman argues that we are at our best as children because we understand the importance of close personal bonds, loyalty, and trust. We love our friends as we will never love again. In adulthood, we spend our lives trying to regain the wisdom we had as children. We fail miserably. We don’t mean what we say and we don’t say what we mean. But we try to improve because regaining the childhood capacity to love is all that will save us. The life-changing power of art is another theme. The ending brings a pay-it-forward theme.

In my experience with kids, as well as my memory of being one, teens rarely express profound thoughts. Nor are they as kind, or at least as aware of the need for sensitivity of their friends’ feelings, as the kids in Backman’s world. Still, it’s a fun story and, notwithstanding an excess of schmaltzy platitudes, My Friends teaches lessons that merit the reader's consideration.

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Epitaphs from the Abyss vol. 1

Published by Oni Press on May 6, 2025

Older readers who were captivated by comic books in their younger years may have fond (or chilling) memories of EC Comics, particularly the Tales from the Crypt and The Vault of Horror series. While the original comics were a bit before my time, enthusiasts of the comic book form sought them out, either as originals (if they could afford them) or in reprint editions.

In the 1950s, Tales from the Crypt and similar titles were cited by legislators and do-gooders who wanted to censor comic books because they featured gruesome horror and crime stories. Also, the artists who drew for the series tended to notice that women have breasts and shared that discovery with happy readers. (The censors’ certainty that Batman was gay and doing God-knows-what with Robin is another story. It was a dark time, as are most times in America’s history.)

Oni Press has revived the EC Comics concept with new stories that follow the tradition and artistic style of the original Tales from the Crypt. The first four issues of Epitaphs from the Abyss are collected in this volume, including reproductions of the alternative covers for each issue.

While the stories in Tales from the Crypt and The Vault of Horror were introduced by the Crypt-Keeper and the Vault-Keeper respectively, the new host (or ghouLunatic, as they were known back in the day) is the Grave-Digger, who promises that every tombstone tells a tale. My favorite stories in the volume are:

“Killer Spec,” written by J. Holtham, art by Jorge Fornes. A broke screenwriter living in LA discovers that his roommate has written a perfect script. He slashes his roommate into a bloody mess and steals his script but pays a predictable price for the crime. The pedestrian story is noteworthy for its art, which fits nicely into the gory, detailed realism of the original series.

“Senator, Senator,” written by Chris Condon, art by Peter Krause. A GOP senator who once believed in a woman’s right to control her own body is forced to change her views by grim enforcers of conservative doctrine.

“Family Values,” written by Stephanie Phillips, art by Phil Hester. A man is forced to kill one member of his family to prevent intruders from killing them all. The reason the dilemma is forced upon him sets up a neatly twisted ending.

“A Hand In It,” written by Jay Stephens, art by Leomacs. A morgue attendant plots to use a serial killer’s dead body to murder her husband until her plan backfires.

“Dead from Exposure,” written by Jay Stephens, art by David Lapham. Legends of a “bog ape” that bears a remarkable resemblance to Swamp Thing attract a man who exposes hoaxes on television. The exposure of the fake monster doesn’t go as planned.

I admired the ghoulish art in “Gray Green Memories” (story and art by Tyler Cook); the story, not so much. On the other hand, I enjoyed the vampire story told in “Blood Type” (written by Corinna Bechko) and the story of blues musician Robert Johnson’s deal with the devil in “The Crossroads Repetition” (written by Chris Condon); the art, not so much.

Other stories have interesting takes on anti-vaxxers and people who text while driving and racists who argue that hating members of other groups is natural.

The featured cover art for each of the four collected issues is sensational. The macabre art captures the horror that exuded from the EC covers of the original series. The alternate covers are an uneven mix.

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The Children of Eve by John Connolly

Published by Atria/Emily Bestler Books on May 6, 2025

Antonio Elizalde, an antiquities dealer in Mexico, has been known to trade in treasured items that cannot be sold on the private market. With the assistance of Roland Bilas, an American, he has arranged to transport certain items that ostensibly belong to Blas Urrea, a drug lord. They are assisted in that endeavor by Wyatt Riggins, who brings the items to the East Coast of the US.

The nature of the smuggled property is a mystery during the novel’s first half, so I won’t spoil it here. I will credit John Connolly, however, for setting up a likely answer that turns out to be incorrect. I was pleased by that because the seemingly obvious answer would have taken the story in a common and uninteresting direction.

The smuggling is funded and managed by Devin Vaughn, who takes his criminal guidance from Aldo Bern, although in this case Vaughn has acted behind Bern’s back. Vaughn has experienced financial setbacks, including the loss of a large cocaine shipment to Customs agents, and his investors may be coming for him. Vaughn took a big risk by stealing from Urrea. Both Vaughn and Bern need to fear Urrea's reach if he discovers Vaughn's responsibility for his loss.

Bodies begin to collect after Urrea engages Eugene Seeley to recover the property and to take the lives of everyone who participated in stealing it. Seeley is ably assisted in that project by a woman known only as La Señora. The woman is adept with blades (she cuts out the hearts of her victims, not just because Urrea wants them but because she finds the work satisfying) but she doesn’t seem to eat or sleep or bleed.

When Riggins gets a text message that simply says “run,” he disappears, leaving behind his girlfriend without saying goodbye. The girlfriend, Zetta Nadeau, retains Charlie Parker to find Riggins.

I am not typically a fan of supernatural elements in thrillers, but I make an exception for Connolly. The creepiness factor in The Children of Eve adds chills to the thrills, and Connolly brings such elegance to his prose that I forgive him for bringing the underworld into his stories. In addition to La Señora, Parker’s dead daughter Jennifer lurks in the background. She has troubles of her own — it can’t be fun to transition between a world she no longer inhabits and a world she isn’t ready to enter — but she plays only a small role in the story. Jennifer has picked up a friend in the spirit world; it seems likely she’ll need one.

Readers who are unfamiliar with the series might be puzzled by the intrusion of the supernatural, but it doesn’t distract from a plot that rolls along as a private detective novel should. Parker searches for Riggins even after Nadeau encourages him to stop because he wants the satisfaction of solving the mystery. For his trouble, he takes a beating that ends with a hospitalization (a common fate for Parker and most other fictional PIs). But Parker isn’t a tough guy so the story isn’t riddled with fights and shootouts. His friends Louis and Angel are true tough guys, but they rarely need to be violent. A mean look from either of them will persuade most people to cooperate.

The story is self-contained. New readers can start the series with this book or almost any other without worrying that they’ve missed too much. Parker’s living daughter, his ex-wife, and his current girlfriend all make brief appearances, but Connolly gives the reader all the information they need to understand those relationships. Parker blames himself for not protecting his dead wife and daughter. That’s probably all the reader needs to know to grasp his personality. The story sets up a future installment that promises to explain why Jennifer’s ghost feels a need to watch over her father at night. While I’m not a big fan of the supernatural, Connolly has me hooked on the mystery so I’m looking forward to that revelation.

Connolly’s plots are always intelligent and his stories always move quickly, but the quality of his prose sets him apart from lesser thriller writers. My favorite sentence in the book might be Connolly’s description of a sales clerk at a weed dispensary: “His hair was bunched in an intricate topknot that would force him to censor his photos in later life so his children didn’t laugh in his face, and he wore a sparse beard that appeared to be growing back after he’d accidentally set its predecessor alight.” Wonderful sentences like that one are sufficient reason to try out a Connolly novel if you haven’t already.

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The Accidentals by Guadalupe Nettel

First published in Spain in 2023; published in translation by Bloomsbury Publishing on April 29, 2025

Guadalupe Nettel is a Mexican writer best known for the novel Still Born. This is her third collection of short fiction. Most of the stories are set in Spanish-speaking countries. Characters are generally living with discontent or fear as they struggle to cope with the uncontrollable events that shape their lives and the secrets that burden their families.

My favorite entry is “Imprinting,” if only because it packs the surprise of an O. Henry story, albeit with a dark ending.  Antonia skips her college classes to accompany a friend who is visiting her sick mother in the hospital. As Antonia walks through the halls, she notices her uncle’s name on one of the doors. She has no clear memory of her uncle but knows that other family members refuse to talk about him. She drops into the room and, while growing close to him, begins to visit every day. The shocking ending allows the reader to deduce the reason why the family wants nothing to do with Frank.

A surprising revelation about family is also at the heart of “Playing with Fire.” The narrator asks herself “if I really knew these two boys who I had given birth to and raised so carefully for years.” When she goes on a camping trip with her disgruntled sons and angry husband, she learns that she doesn’t know any of them as well as she thought she did.

Another story that relies on surprise is “The Fellowship of Orphans.” An adult woman recalls her days in an orphanage, including the warnings the orphans were given about the risk of disappearing in Mexico City if they were to wander off. Walking through a park, she sees a poster with a photo of a missing man. After she spots the man, she calls the number on the poster and learns from the man’s mother that the man she saw is indeed the woman’s son. The woman says she will come to see him, but what happens next is not what the narrator expected. The story doesn’t pack the emotional punch that Nettel likely intended, but it sends a message about familial love — or the consequences of its absence.

“Life Elsewhere,” my second favorite in the collection, tells the story of a man who, after drama school, abandoned his hope for a theatrical career and settled into marriage. He disagreed with his wife about their choice of apartment — she preferred the one with better light, he liked the one in a more interesting building. His choice is rented before they can decide. He later finds that the apartment he wanted is inhabited by an actor he knew in school. Drawn to the apartment more than to his acquaintance, over the course of time and to his wife’s dismay he “began turning into just another member of the family.”

“The Pink Door” is a “be careful what you wish for” story. As is true of most such stories, it relies on something akin to magic to deliver its lesson. An aging man with a controlling wife enters what he believes to be a house of prostitution that suddenly appeared in his neighborhood. The business instead sells him sweets that change his life, making him realize that wished-for changes come with unanticipated consequences.

Three other stories are less appealing. A thousand-year-old monkey puzzle tree in a family’s yard was a source of pride until it became infected by a parasite and lost its leaves and branches. The father believed that the tree held the family together and despaired of the family’s future. “The Forest Under Earth” is built upon predictable comparisons of root systems to family connectedness, but the story goes nowhere.

“The Accidentals” compares the albatross to migrants who flee dictatorships but yearn to return home, an “accidental” being the name given to an albatross that strays from its usual migration route and ends up in an unfamiliar place, mating with an albatross it wouldn’t otherwise desire simply because it is the only available choice. Like “The Forest Under the Earth,” the author’s chosen metaphor is a bit too obvious.

“The Torpor” imagines a permanent pandemic. A couple fled from urban enforcement of social isolation restrictions to join a commune in the woods, then decided they needed the relative comfort of urban living when the woman became pregnant. The story has some imaginative touches of world building in a lasting pandemic but the woman’s vacillation between staying or leaving after returning to the city lacks an emotional punch.

Five of eight successful stories is a decent batting average for a collection. While the volume lacks a home run, it doesn’t have any strikeouts. Her sharp prose alone makes Nettel a writer worth reading.

RECOMMENDED

The Perturbation of O by Joseph G. Peterson

Published by University Of Iowa Press on April 29, 2025

This amusing novel is told almost entirely in the form of a chat between two characters. Fans of the movie My Dinner with Andre will probably enjoy The Perturbation of O for its celebration of conversation.

Gideon Anderson was an unenthused college student. A generous uncle covered his living expenses, leaving him with little incentive to make a life for himself. He lost interest in everything and responded to his disinterest by writing a book about all the reasons nothing mattered to him. “It told the brief story of my final year at the University of Chicago where I had squandered my time not participating in classes, not planning for my future, but where I had gone about squandering funds that my uncle sent me on a monthly basis, it was a memoir I had initially titled The Ark of Disquiet . . . .”

Gideon included in the manuscript “all the things that had filled me with loathing that year of my final year at the University of Chicago . . . filling it like Noah’s ark with all the creaturely memories that filled me with bile.” He printed it out and planned to “release that ark upon the waters of Lake Michigan, thereby flushing away the great turd of a manuscript.”

While waiting for appropriately stormy weather to assure that the manuscript would be washed away, Gideon attended a party where he sat next to a “Kentucky gentleman” who “had just published a book about his boyhood in Kentucky.” Gideon drunkenly told the story of his own book and of his plan to jettison the turd into Lake Michigan. The Kentucky gentleman persuaded Gideon to send it instead to his agent, who loved the book and sold it to a publisher that made it a best seller under the title Gideon’s Confession. The book spawned a Broadway musical and a movie, generating enough income to allow Gideon to continue living a comfortable life as a slacker, albeit one who was beleaguered by unwelcome fame.

The novel opens seventeen years later in a coffee shop, where Gideon is reading a manuscript written by the Kentucky gentleman’s grandson for which he agreed write a blurb. He’s spotted by Regina Blast, a woman who was the best friend of Gideon’s girlfriend when Gideon was still a student. Regina was interested in painting light. When Gideon saw her paintings, he got a boner (at least that’s how Regina recalls it). They slept together, ending Gideon’s relationship and Regina’s friendship with Gideon’s girlfriend.

Gideon wrote about Regina and her paintings in Gideon’s Confession. Regina thought his descriptions of her art were honest and perceptive, even if she didn’t appreciate his description of her body or the sexual encounter that subsequent lovers pleaded with her to reenact. The bulk of the novel consists of their conversation in the coffee shop.

Much of their discussion involves Oprah Winfrey. Oprah had Gideon on her show after he was proclaimed the King of Slack, the symbol of the Slacker Generation. Oprah later visited Regina in her studio to view the art that so enamored Gideon. The visit caused Regina to rethink her artwork after she made a sketch of Oprah. She found a perfect O in the sketch and thereafter became “primarily a painter of brushstrokes” that form Os.

Gideon and Regina trade delightfully over-the-top descriptions of Oprah. Says Gideon, “Oprah has a magnificence about her when you are with her in person that is hard to describe, and in my life I don’t think I have ever encountered anyone who was so magnificent as her.” Says Regina, “in all of my life, I have never come close to encountering a person who, like Oprah, possessed such a bottomless depth of humanity and understanding and lovingness . . . ” and on and on and on.

The conversations consist of long rambling sentences. Gideon and Regina repeatedly circle back to the same issues — Gideon’s book, Regina’s art, their sexual encounter, and lots of Oprah. The conversation would be maddening or boring if it weren’t so funny. And funny it is.

The story nevertheless raises interesting questions about the right of a memoir author to discuss intimate details of another person’s life, the nature of art, and the merits of being a slacker. Gideon’s memoir is seen by some as an anti-capitalist manifesto, but it seems clear that Gideon was simply blowing off steam. The story might therefore be seen as raising questions about how media sensations are promoted as geniuses or generational voices when, in fact, they don’t have much to say at all. Serious readers might therefore have serious conversations about The Perturbation of O, but I doubt they will have conversations as amusing as the one in which Gideon and Regina engage.

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