The Ledger

By Becky Holland

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐¾ — 4.75/5

Don’t let the size of Fredrik Backman’s The Deal of a Lifetime fool you.

At barely more than 60 pages, this little novella has more to say about life, death, love, regret and the value of our time than many novels four or five times its length.

The story is told by a father speaking to his son on Christmas Eve. He has spent much of his life pursuing success, often at the expense of the people who should have mattered most. But an encounter with a sick little girl — and a mysterious woman who seems to hold the power of life and death — presents him with an extraordinary choice.

What is one life worth?

And what would you give to save another?

Those questions are at the heart of the story, but Backman doesn’t answer them neatly. Instead, he asks the reader to think about what makes a life meaningful in the first place.

One passage stopped me completely:

“A second is always a second; that’s the one definitive value we have on earth.”

That may be my favorite line from the entire book.

Time is the one thing every person receives and no person can keep. We spend it every day, often without thinking about where it is going or who is receiving it.

And then one day there are no more seconds.

Backman’s story also raises a haunting question about memory. Is being remembered part of what gives our lives meaning? If our names eventually disappear, does what we did while we were here disappear with them?

I don’t think so.

That was perhaps my biggest takeaway from The Deal of a Lifetime. A person can leave something behind even when his or her name is eventually forgotten. Our choices affect other people. Those people affect others. Love, kindness, sacrifice and even the lessons learned from our mistakes can travel farther than we ever know.

This isn’t necessarily an easy little Christmas story. There is sadness here, and the premise becomes increasingly emotional as the consequences of the father’s decision become clear.

But it isn’t hopeless.

It’s thoughtful, bittersweet and unmistakably human.

My only complaint may be that I wanted a little more. Backman accomplishes an extraordinary amount in so few pages, but I would have happily stayed with the story longer. Then again, perhaps its brevity is part of the point.

A story about the finite nature of time probably shouldn’t waste any of ours.

I finished The Deal of a Lifetime in one sitting, without skipping a page — or a word — and then sat there thinking about it after I closed the cover.

For a book this small, that’s quite an accomplishment.

Rating: 4.75 out of 5 stars.

The Deal of a Lifetime is a tiny book with a very big question at its center: We only get so many seconds. What are we going to do with them?