The Answer Is No

by Fredrik Backman

It’s a frying pan that ruins Lucas’s life. We’ll get to that.

What an opener

Lucas is happy. This is a very provoking thing to the world. Because people aren’t supposed to be happy, they’re only supposed to want to be happy, because how otherwise are you supposed to be able to sell things to them?

Okay, I mean you can start a book by just absolutely destroying my mood that’s fine. Thanks.

More than anything people are supposed to pretend to be happy on the internet so that other people are reminded of how unhappy they themselves are by comparison. Humanity has a system.

Oh it just keeps going-

He doesn’t want you to call or email and he most certainly doesn’t want you to ever circle back. He would rather be hit by a truck than be in your group chat.

That’s so real tho

Because Lucas is making the mistake of thinking that the board wants to solve the problem. But people actually almost never want to do that.

“The board forbids it!!!” screams Head One at that point, in a way that actually justifies the use of at least three exclamation marks.

This actually made me laugh

“I usually keep my peanuts next to a jar of peanut butter, so they understand what I’m capable of!”

this is genuinely so funny

Any middle manager on the planet could of course have told him that this is a terrible decision, because the truth about problems is that the problem itself is never actually the problem. It’s always the people involved who are the problem.