My (New) Favorite Author
I have a new favorite author… Fredrik Backman. He’s wirtten nine fiction titles and one nonfiction title. I plan to read them all.
I read Beartown first. I enjoyed it enough to go for round two. I’m now on My Friends. I’m blown away. I can think of a few authors in my life that have thrilled me. Frank Herbert, Ayn Rand, Douglas Adams, Haruki Murakami, to name a few. What Backman is doing for me is different. He is making me feel emotions. In the book My Friends I feel like I am on a journey with the characters in the book. I don’t know exactly how Backman does it, I think in a large part, it’s his use of dialogue. The narrative is “dialogue heavy,” by that I mean: Through the character’s dialogue, both spoken and internal, he makes me feel like I am experiencing what they are experiencing. He is also very quippy. I normally don’t go in for work that leans on that technique, but Backman integrates this beautifully with his dialogue heavy approach. He uses writing in the third person to help the reader better understand the characters thoughts, what is happening to them and how they are feeling. The way he uses the combination of all three is very enjoyable.
Yes, when you read good fiction you are supposed to feel like you are part of the story. That hasn’t always been the case for me, but Backman is able to make that happen for me.