My Friends

* ONE OF GOODREADS READERS' MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2025 *

大多數人甚至不會注意他們——三個小小的身影坐在世界上最著名畫作裡長長碼頭的盡頭。大多數人以為那只不過是海洋的描繪。但路易莎(Louisa)，一位藝術家，卻知道事情並非如此，她決心揭開這三個神秘身影背後的故事。

二十五年前，在一個偏遠的小鎮，四個青少年在碼頭上消磨時光以逃避艱難的家庭生活。他們在那裡大笑、講故事。喬爾(Joar)，從不退縮的鬥士；安靜且愛讀書的泰德(Ted)，正在哀悼父親；艾莉(Ali)，一個父親永遠不會在同一個地方久居的女孩；最後是那位畫家，一個收藏安眠藥、不想引起注意的男孩，他擁有非凡天賦，這可能是他能通往更好生活的門票。這四個迷失的靈魂在彼此身上找到了每天早晨起床的理由，一個做夢的理由。

在那個夏天，誕生了一幅超越時空的藝術作品。這幅畫將意外地交給十八歲的路易莎照管。在她努力決定如何處理這份遺產的過程中，她展開了一場充滿驚喜的跨國之旅，試圖了解這幅畫誕生的故事。當她越來越接近這幅畫的誕生地時，她越發感到自己也應該釋放自己的藝術靈魂。但這個故事告訴我們，快樂的結局並不總是以我們預期的形式出現。

這是一本全新的作品，見證了友誼與藝術的變革力量。

#1 New York Times bestselling author Fredrik Backman, who “captures the messy essence of being human” (The Washington Post), returns with an unforgettably funny, deeply moving tale of four teenagers whose friendship creates a bond so powerful that it changes a stranger’s life twenty-five years later.

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 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 town, a group of teenagers find refuge from their difficult home lives by spending their days laughing and telling stories out on a pier. There’s Joar, who never backs down from a fight; quiet and bookish Ted who is mourning his father; Ali, the daughter of a man who never stays in one place for long; and finally, there’s the artist, a boy who hoards sleeping pills and shuns attention, but who possesses an extraordinary gift that might be his ticket to a better life. These four lost souls find in each other a reason to get up each morning, a reason to dream.

Out of that summer emerges a transcendent work of art, a painting that will unexpectedly be put into eighteen-year-old Louisa’s care. As she struggles to decide what to do with this bequest, she embarks on a surprise-filled cross-country journey to learn the story of how the painting came to be. The closer she gets to the painting’s birthplace, the more she feels compelled to unleash her own artistic spirit, but happy endings don’t always take the form we expect in this fresh testament to the transformative power of friendship and art.