I am sure that you all have a list of books in your head that people have suggested that you might like. And then they suggest it again and then maybe again,! Beartown is one of those books for me. Boy am I glad that I loved it when I did read it.
Beartown isn't the first thing I have read by Fredrik Backman. Last year I read a short story called The Answer is No which was a bit of fun, and I have watched both the Swedish and American movie versions of A Man Called Ove, so I expected a book that had funny parts with kind of serious undertones. Beartown is not that book!
Beartown is about an economically downtrodden town in a forest in Sweden. The main employers have closed down so the main thing that brings the town hope is the triumphs of the town's ice hockey team. This season they are flying, and they only need a couple more wins to bring the trophy home. But it isn't just about the trophy. If they can win the championships then maybe a new sports academy will be built in the town, bring jobs and prosperity. It's a lot of pressure to put on a group of kids.
There are so many characters in this book and so many contrasts. There is the GM of the team, Peter Andersson, who grew up in Beartown and made it to the big town playing professionally in Canada, only to end up back in town with his ultra competitive lawyer wife and two kids. In contrast, there are men that he played with in town who have never left and who struggle every day just to get by. There is the old coach Sune who built the club and the team culture but the board now want him gone but he doesn't get along with the current team coach David whose coaching ethos can be summarised in just one word. Win!
In the current team there is the star, Kevin, who is this generation's boy who is going to get out of Beartown and make it to the big time. There is Benji, who is Kevin's best friend who is also the enforcer on the team. And yet, he seems to drift around not really worrying too much about school hiding his own secrets from everyone. Then there is Amat, a younger immigrant kid who has been invisible up until recently when someone realises that he is super fast. Suddenly he is part of the team, with all that means, and his friends feel left behind.
When I started reading the book it took me a little bit to get into it. Thanks to the way that Backman tells the story, you know that something bad is going to happen but it is just a question of when. That style of storytelling starts right from the opening line.
Late one evening, toward the end of March, a teenager picked up a double-barrelled shotgun, walked into the forest, put the gun to someone else's forehead, and pulled the trigger. This is the story of how we got there.
The tension was built up so well, that in the end I had to put it down for a day or so. We had multiple view points from characters telling us what they were seeing and their own stories, which all helped build up the tension. Once I picked up the book again and got past the main catalyst event, I couldn't put the book down and I just had to see how it all played out, no matter how sad or angry it made me feel.
And I did feel angry. Very angry at times. At an after party a young girl is raped and the ice hockey club basically implodes. Most of the club members are more concerned at the threat of losing one of their best players on the eve of their biggest games in years and soon people are suggesting that someone is trying to sabotage the team. The young girl involved very quickly becomes the pariah, with suggestions being made that she is lying, or that she was asking for it and so on. Relationships disintegrate, family's are traumatised and the whole town soon has an opinion.
Please don't let the fact that this book features ice hockey put you off reading it. The reality is that this book could be set in a town near you featuring your local sports. It just so happens that Backman set the book in Sweden and features ice hockey, but it could be a suburban cricket team near the beach where similar things happen. It is a universal story.
I've been involved in kids sports varying from cricket to footy to basketball, and I have to say I recognised some of those parents and some of the attitudes, including the must win no matter what, the parents who you never see at the games, the ones you wish you didn't see at every game and everyone having a very strong opinion on what is the right thing for the club to do. It's just that the people in Beartown dialled it all up a notch or three.
It is also not just a young person's story. How many examples are there of successful sportspeople or entertainment stars where they are accused of behaving badly towards women, or other minority groups, and yet they are back playing sports after a short ban or find themselves working in the media? The message that this sends...being good at sports/singing/producing music etc is far more important than being a decent human being.
This book was a 5/5 read for me. I have already requested the next book from the library. Will I be ready to read it when it comes in? Yes, but I am going to have to psych myself up a bit I think! What I do know is that I will be emotionally invested in the story when I do read it.
I am sharing this review with the Books in Translation challenge hosted at Introverted Reader. This book was also one of my nominated 20 Books of Winter reads, and at 488 pages counts as a Big Book of Summer.
Rating 5/5
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