This Book Teaches a Good Deal

Book Review: The Deal of a Lifetime - Fredrik Backman

Only Fredrik Backman has this impeccable quality of writing books that affect you in many ways, that touch your heart, overwhelm you, make you smile and teary eyed within a span of few pages.

Backman calls the preface to this book - A few words before the rest of the words, and I must say these few words are truly golden.These words made me buy the book with a sense of urgency.

Few of my favorite excerpts from the book are here -

"May be all people have that feeling deep down , that your home town is something you can never really escape, but can never really go home to, either. Because it's not home anymore. We are not trying to make peace with it. Not with the streets and bricks of it. Just with the person we were back then, and may be forgive ourselves for everything we thought we would become and didn't ".

"Every parent will take five minutes in the car outside the house from time to time, just sitting there, breathing and gathering the strength to head back inside to all of their responsibilities. The suffocating expectation of being good, coping." 

The deal of a lifetime is a difficult book to review because this short novella, just 65 pages, stumps you with simple and straightforward questions that are extremely difficult to answer.

In the preface, when the author states - 'this is a short story about what you would be prepared to sacrifice in order to save a life', you only get a minuscule of what is in store. Also he says, may be you will find this to be a strange story. Little true, for what triggers the sacrifice of ones' past, all of future, all footprints left until a defining moment; what causes that single act of complete abnegation is not easy to comprehend, it requires a lot of attention while reading, and leads to serious contemplation after the book is over.

Characters are very few - a 45+ yr old man, his young son, his wife, a 5 yr old girl who is fighting cancer, her mother and a woman in grey sweater and the town of Helsingborg in Sweden. Yes, the protagonist's hometown is quite a character for he fails to make peace with his home town, believes it knows all of his secrets and never forgives him.

For our rich and famous protagonist, who deserted his family in search of success and milestones to achieve, happiness is a thing for children and animals, 'good enough' is a term to hate. It takes him really long to understand the difference between contentment and complacency, the contrast between these two terms is beautifully projected through the father - son relationship.

"You humans always think you are ready to give your lives, but only until you understand what that really involves. You are obsessed with your legacy, aren't you ? You can't bear to die and be forgotten." These lines hit you directly.  It is Christmas Eve in the book and no better time for an act of redemption, but what is that act of redemption? Read this little masterpiece to get the answer.

Do you remember the tuning fork experiments we did in middle school? Backman strikes a tuning fork and it just matches the natural frequency within us and the loudest sounds of reality we face come out plain and unrestricted. Quite a deal packed in this book.