Before Fredrik Backman became world-famous — and before Tom Hanks himself starred in a film based on his book — he was a blogger. And in the same year his debut novel A Man Called Ove was published, a small book titled Things My Son Needs to Know about the World came out.
And it’s not a work of fiction at all. This is Backman the early blogger, pure and unfiltered. The book is made up of several sections-posts focused on a single theme: what the author, as a young father, wants to tell his son about life in this world. What he believes should matter to him.
But all of this is written in the form of letters — a monologue intended for his son, who will one day be the reader. In fact, Backman opens the book by apologizing to his son in advance for the next 18 years (until he comes of age).
I honestly don’t know whether I would have been able to write something like that 22 years ago when my first daughter was born. Probably not — I simply didn’t have enough life experience yet. And now I understand that my list would be enormous, spanning several volumes.
Backman, however, chooses to outline the main topics right away — the things his son absolutely must know. These include:
- Motion-sensitive bathroom lights
- IKEA
- Soccer (football)
- Stuff (whether possessions are worth worrying about)
- Being a Man (that’s literally what he calls the chapter)
- God and Airports (don’t ask why they’re in the same topic)
- The Singing Plastic Giraffe (and similar toys gifted to young parents by well-meaning childless friends — friends who will soon cease to be friends)
- Clashes with other parents on playgrounds (ah yes, those “experienced mothers of one child”)
- Good and Evil (how could he skip that)
- Starting a Band (an essential stage for every teenager)
- Love
- And “When I Hold Your Hand a Little Too Tight”
Overall, the topics are excellent — but the author constantly wanders away from them. For example, in the very first chapter, which is supposedly about bathroom lightbulbs, he also talks about an action plan for the event of the father’s death (meaning Backman himself), and about arguments with a nurse over “maternity math.”
And all of this is delivered with Backman’s signature humor — the kind that in his novels is usually hidden behind the characters and felt indirectly, whereas here Fredrik Backman lets himself fully cut loose, with nothing holding him back (not even a storyline).
To give you an idea of the level of advice, here’s an example:
You spit on the napkin.
Then you wipe the child’s face with the napkin. You don’t spit straight onto the child.
Another quote feels as if it were taken straight from my own life:
Even now, I’m still not entirely sure where we stand with this whole thing when the nurse asked if we had “any other health questions” and I took the opportunity to ask at what age you can normally tell whether a child is right- or left-footed. And the nurse asked, “Why?” And I said, “To know if he’s a left winger or a right winger.” I think that was all right. But it’s not all that easy to know. The nurse mostly talked to your mother after that.
I also constantly crack silly jokes — and then end up being scolded by my wife and kids. And the older I get, the more often (and the worse) I joke.
The book, written as a series of monologues, reads wonderfully. Of course, it’s not really a book for his son (if the son ever does read it, it will be at a point when advice is already too late). It’s a book about life — about how seriously we sometimes take the world around us, and how, in reality, we should look at things more simply, with humor.
And in this form, it works brilliantly. Although you can feel that this is not yet the author of the great novels we now know — it’s the blogger Backman, jumping constantly from topic to topic, yet still doing it harmoniously and engagingly.
In some ways, the book reminded me of Evgeny Grishkovets’s early monologues, like Simultaneously. He also tried to speak in simple language about everyday things he didn’t fully understand. Backman, however, doesn’t pose questions — he simply tells his son how he sees this world and how to survive in it. From his perspective as an adult father. So that the younger generation, so to speak, won’t make the same silly mistakes or stumble over the same stone again.
No, it’s not a deep, philosophical work — but it will bring you plenty of enjoyment for a couple of evenings. Because I kept catching myself thinking, “Oh, I do the exact same thing,” “So it’s not just me who’s completely out of my mind, after all,” or simply, “Well, he’s right!”
But there’s one piece of advice I don’t agree with. You don’t have to love football. That’s just one of those clichés society tries to impose on us. You should love ballroom dancing. And computer games. (And yes, I also always walk against the flow in IKEA.)
My rating: 4.5/5
