#28 in Humour
The Answer is No
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Our view
Fredrik Backman starts “The Answer is No” from an absurd quarrel over a frying pan and makes of it a warm comedy about solitude. Lucas wants video games, wine and no visitors; the apartment board has other ideas, and things get thoroughly out of hand. Some readers are less sure of the middle stretch and miss the humour of the opening, then find the side characters winning them over. For anyone after something funny and kind.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
Lucas knows the perfect night entails just three things: video games, wine, and pad thai. Peanuts are a must! Other people? Not so much. Why complicate things when he’s happy alone? Then one day the apartment board, a vexing trio of authority, rings his doorbell. And Lucas’s solitude takes a startling hike. They demand to see his frying pan. Someone left one next to the recycling room overnight, and instead of removing the errant object, as Lucas suggests, they insist on finding the guilty party. But their plan backfires. Colossally. Told in Fredrik Backman’s singular witty style with sharply drawn characters and relatable antics, The Answer Is No is a laugh-out-loud portrait of a man struggling to keep to himself in a world that won’t leave him alone.
Where the score comes from
The sources average 8.0 across 165 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 53% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Humour average of 7.8. That is how 7.9 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hardcover | 8.0 | 165 | 100% |
If you liked this
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