Fredrik Backman is a hearthug of an author, someone I can expect to break my heart while still wrapping me in a hug. I was looking for an audio book to read while travelling for Thanksgiving, and when I saw Backman’s And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer (Simon & Schuster 2016), a slim novella, on Libby, I decided it was perfect. I didn’t realize until I was several minutes into listening just how perfect it would be for a day of family and giving thanks.
No one is better than Backman at understanding and presenting human nature and how perfectly imperfect life is, how perfectly imperfect we are. His full-length novels hum with that spirit and heart, and this novella is no different that the longer works.
The novella opens with Noah, a young boy, talking about his experiences with his grandfather, how he’d take the young boy out to various locations, hand him a compass, and tell him to take them home. How he’d shared a love of math with the young boy, promising him that math would always lead him home. But the grandfather is failing, his memories are falling out of his grasp, merging and blending and some simply disappearing, he’s confusing his numbers-loving-grandson, Noah, with his words-loving-son, Ted. He’s afraid of this loosening grasp on life, and this novella is his world flashing before him. The smell of hyacinth, a boat, the cigarettes he stopped smoking when she told him she was pregnant but he finds himself suddenly craving, his favorite joke that he’s forgotten the punch line to. He’s fading in front of son. In front of his grandson – and the memories are flooding the eyes and hearts of all three of the men.
The novella is one of mortality and memories and lives worth living, loving, and mourning the light as it fades from those we’ve never known a day without.
Read this book.
A Girl Named Tommi 