“The best in everything (and more)” by Cina Friedner

This is a review. The author is responsible for the opinions in the text.

Cina Friedner is the author who is remembered by many of today’s 10 to 11 year olds. Certainly also in preschool age and adulthood. Friedner has an unusually great sensitivity to the joys and sorrows that fill life, not least in middle school. “Så himla shitigt” (2019) is the title of the author’s first medieval novel.

A few tracks later, “Bäst på allt” presents itself, a story about how shitty it is with people who know best. And who knows about it? But, and Friedner captures exactly the dualism in this: Even up there at the peak of knowledge, it is often terribly lonely. It’s actually almost painful, because those who know and know most things don’t like to complain about the fact that everything seems to be so easy. Group work is also a pain in the ass, where in the book Nina is of course expected to manage the whole thing, while no one wants her to excel.

For Nina, learning works like a dance, but mom is still unhappy. It’s not enough to be the best, only the mega-best counts. “Eyes on the prize-winning baby. Eyes on the prize,” Mom complains. The eternal admonitions stick with both Nina and me as a reader. And so it is with social life at school. Nina mostly keeps to herself.

You see, it’s better to be semi-happy average than to rake in the big pot in desperate, sad loneliness.

And every person needs an outlet. Nina’s name is Astri and she is old and physically frail, but with an inner strength that becomes Nina’s lifeblood. There’s also a new girl coming into the class who is at least as talented as Nina. New Isolde, she also has a mother who prioritizes the surface over the worries inside. Isolde’s mother is an influencer and nothing is too private to post online. So two pretty confused girls, but two solitudes eventually become one “we”. Despite everything, Isolde manages to distance herself and show both envy and excessive demands. Something that gives life and is contagious.

Cina Friedner doesn’t claim that life is easy. On the contrary, emotions such as abandonment, jealousy, anger, longing… are difficult to manage. Life requires constant work and the courage to question yourself and the people around you. In “Bäst på allt” Cina Friedner tries, together with the reader, to find strategies for friendship, the important thing that we all want so much, but which often turns out to be quite complicated. This is demonstrated not least by DN’s current series of articles on this topic.

What is also crucial for the quality of the book is that humor, warmth and acceptance form a subtext of the story, even in the depiction of genuinely offended people. Stretch reading is the right word.

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