My Most Captivating Character of the Month for September comes from Fredrik Backman’s My Friends. I don’t have a post up about this one yet, because…well, I just don’t. It was really hard to pick a book this month because I read a lot by my standards, and most of them had at least two characters that deserve some thinking on. Almost everyone who graced the pages of My Friends deserved a post–and, I did have drafts that featured 7 different ones. In the end, Ted won out.
Ted is a former history teacher who left the profession after being stabbed by a student (he was not the intended target, he just got between the knife and the teacher it was meant for). Honestly, that’s a pretty good way to talk about Ted. He’s generally the thing between a person and something else. Sometimes it’s a positive thing–like when he bridges the gap between his famous painter friend and a teenager exiting the foster system. But there’s a lot he’s standing between someone and a goal/person that’s not so positive, either–much to his own detriment
For the purpose of the narrative of the book, he’s the one that helps Louisa (the teenager I just mentioned) understand his artist friend and a painting that has meant to much to her for most of her life. Ted tells her the story behind the painting, the people captured in it, and how the painting was almost never completed–and how it got the artist exposure to the art world outside his small hometown. In doing so, he helps her to understand some things she’s sensed but hasn’t been able to articulate, she sees that she’s not as alone in the world as she thinks, and he essentially makes her a member of that small group of friends from decades before.
In the midst of friends with big personalities, fragile families (not that his was a model of anything functional), and emotional extremes, Ted was the glue that kept them together without overshadowing anyone–he did it quietly. He found himself taking responsibility for them, at least emotionally–but his home was also a source of safety, healing, and food. To be fair, his mother did psychologically damage Ted, but it was unknowing and unintentional; because of her, his friends had a place to escape to, to dream, to heal, and to enjoy life.
Despite his early protestations, he ends up providing the same for Louise. He can’t help it, that’s just who he is. He’s the kind of guy who will turn his life around for a friend–whether it’s someone he’s known since childhood, a brother who bullies him and allows him to be bullied by others, or an annoying person he just met. He takes responsibility for them and makes their lives at least a little better.
It’s captivating to see that character unfold.
Phew! Made it through this whole thing without indulging my impulse for a Barney Stinson-inspired joke. It was hard, but I did it!
What character would you name for last month?
