A review by kmg365
The Deal of a Lifetime by Fredrik Backman

3.0

This is described as a novella, but it’s short enough that it felt like a longer short story. I just finished reading a book of short stories, after which I noted in the review that I don’t really care for short stories.

So because I am evidently not very smart, after reading a book of short stories (which I don’t generally like), I flailed around for what I wanted to read next, and came up with… a short story.

And I’m about to explain that I think the shortcomings in this piece of writing come from the fact that it’s a short story. Obtuse? Moi? How dare you!

The beauty of a Backman novel is that it sneaks up on you. You start out with all these odd, possibly annoying people, and by the end, you love those people like family, warts and all.

There wasn’t nearly enough time for me to develop even a tolerance for the nameless narrator of this story, let alone like him. He makes a single, large sacrifice, but I think I wanted him to suffer for a few decades before being erased from history. Is it too much to ask for him to be made as miserable as he no doubt made many other people before he winked out of existence? I don’t even know if the harm he did will be erased. We learn that his son will still exist, but someone else will be his father. Does that mean that the low-level office employee this guy had to have fired for no good reason (he was just that kind of guy-- you know it happened, even if we didn’t hear about it) at some point was instead simply fired by some other rich jerk? There’s certainly no guarantee that the little girl who gets to live her life won’t grow up to be hurt by a guy just like Mr. One-Good-Deed Narrator.

I didn’t get this worked up about it while I was listening, but the more I think about it, the madder I get. I can’t fault the writing, and if one of the hallmarks of a good story is that it stays with you-- mission accomplished.