Title: The Answer is No
Author(s) Name(s): Fredrik Backman
Published in: December, 2024
Why You Might Like This Book: Read this book if you enjoy
- light-hearted fiction,
- funny short reads,
- witty dialogue, and
- absurdist humour.
Who Should Avoid This Book: Avoid this book if you are triggered by or dislike
- loneliness, or
- loss of a pet.
Recommended for children? Yes!
Lucas is a man who is happy alone – he does some computer job for a living, and enjoys his free time with video games, wine, and pad thai. There is no room for other people in his apartment, in his life, or in his mind. Until the appearance of a frying pan changes it all, and he is now forced to engage in conversations with others. A humourous character-driven novella from the author of “A Man Called Ove”. It has received a lot of good reviews. How good is this short story, really?
From the very beginning, we can see philosophy through a funny lens, reality of the modern-day adult life dressed in a comic suit. You catch yourself smiling right away! Lucas is a guy in his thirties who does something to do with computers for a living, he lives alone, and is very happy being alone. Lucas has had no friends or loved ones all his life, and his reading the justification for this choice he has made would want married people to be single and convince single people to stay happily single forever! How could a frying pan ruin this happiness and peace? But somehow it does and that’s how our story begins.
Before you could stop laughing at one joke, as your eyes are reading the following line, you realize that another joke is already waiting there for you. Backman is a natural when it comes to absurdist humour and mockery of mankind’s ways. He makes fun of almost everything that is common in an adult’s life in a city in this day and age: people’s pretensions on social media, problems and conflicts in relationships and marriages, over-used thriller plots on OTTs, how being smart can lead to unpleasant outcomes, like being assigned more work, using too many exclamation marks instead of just one … You get the point – Backman mocks everything he could think of with witty dialogue.
Is it really a book for adults? Isn’t this meant for kids and only for kids? Imagine dinosaurs talking and fighting with one another on the screen and a kid sitting on the sofa, watching the whole thing with his big eyes glued to the screen: that’s how you might feel, as you get pulled into the frying pan investigation story. This book definitely gives you that much-needed break from the frustrations of everyday adult life and pushes you into a short episode of childhood innocence. Fredrick Backman is one of my favourite authors for this reason, as his books have this ridiculous view of how humans make their own lives unnecessarily complicated, throwing some light on how the fix is easy but getting there requires us to change our mindset a bit, and his tool is humour.
The story takes unusual, unimaginable twists and turns, and this could make up for all the lack of twists and turns in the last supposed-to-be-thrilling thriller novel you read. Slowly, the happy loner of a man is forced to be in contact with other humans, and his peace is ruined, but in ridiculous ways. The author allows us to picture every event, every emotion, also adding extremely unthinkable metaphors and anlogies, making you do one of these for every line you read: laugh or chuckle or at least smile!
Interesting (comical, though) quote: “If you ask people what they think, they start thinking, and that’s how wars start.”
Tired of your TV and books and news being all full of violence and bad news and dark humour? Don’t have the time to go watch your favourite comedy show? Grab “The Answer Is No” by Fredrik Backman – I’ll gladly give this one a 4-star rating! This is a beautiful, light-hearted book that reminds us of the power of community, how isolation can be convenient but not a compulsion, and why you should let good people, friends, and good neighbours in, while also maintaining healthy boundaries. The bonus is that it is also a quick read and is equally entertaining for both adults and kids!
