Author: Fredrik Backman
Year published: 2024
Category: Adult fiction (novella)
Pages: 68 pages
Rating: 4 out of 5
Location: (my 2025 Google Reading map): Sweden
Summary: Lucas knows the perfect night entails just three things: video games, wine, and pad thai. Peanuts are a must! Other people? Not so much. Why complicate things when he’s happy alone?
Then one day the apartment board, a vexing trio of authority, rings his doorbell. And Lucas’s solitude takes a startling hike. They demand to see his frying pan. Someone left one next to the recycling room overnight, and instead of removing the errant object, as Lucas suggests, they insist on finding the guilty party. But their plan backfires. Colossally.
Told in Fredrik Backman’s singular witty style with sharply drawn characters and relatable antics, The Answer Is No is a laugh-out-loud portrait of a man struggling to keep to himself in a world that won’t leave him alone.
Review: I have really enjoyed the Backman books that I've read in the past (links to my reviews: Us Against You; Anxioius People; Beartown) and this one was particularly good. Thank you, Vicki of I'd Rather Be at the Beach, for recommending it to me.
Lucas has figured out how to be happy: avoid people. Some days I totally get that, but I cannot imagine that being the right life for me. However, Lucas is happy, he's figured out what he needs, what he wants, and how to avoid things that make him unhappy. Good for him! Then people start coming to his door, trying to involve him in things he doesn't want to be involved in, and he gets sucked in. He's a problem-solver (oh, I so get this!).
The situation these characters find themselves in is outrageous, but I can also see bits of it happening in real life. Just enough reality to make it plausible and funny.
The characters in this book made me chuckle out loud. They are quirky, interesting, annoying, and funny. A good laugh felt excellent. And at only 68 pages, this is an extremely tightly written, quick read. If you like Fredrik Backman's novels, I highly recommend picking this one up. It's currently $1.99 for the Kindle version.
Challenges for which this counts:
- Alphabet (Title)--A
- Cover Love--A silhouette or a shadow
- Literary Escapes--Sweden
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