Beartown

I have very few authors who are automatic reads for me – whose books I love so much that I will track their writings and pick up whatever comes next. Sarah J. Maas is becoming one of them, but Fredrik Backman is already there.

I’ve already talked about how much I utterly adore A Man Called Ove, which I maintain is still the perfect book to recommend to people. (And since I first read it a few years ago, it has definitely picked up steam in America – I feel like everyone at work has read it!).

His two other novels and his novella have followed similar strokes as Ove – a grumpy older main character, whimsy, and ultimately a warm, fuzzy feeling at the end (but still delivered in a satisfying, literary way). The reviews for his latest book, Beartown, warned that this novel was a departure from his normal style – and let me tell you, they were not kidding.

Beartown is broadly compared to a Swedish Friday Night Lights – a small town completely obsessed with hockey and that idolizes the teenage boys who are the star players; a town that gets torn apart by a tragedy and exposes what it means to be a community – for good and for evil.

WHAT I READ:

Beartown (Fredrik Backman)

GOODREADS SYNOPSIS:

People say Beartown is finished. A tiny community nestled deep in the forest, it is slowly losing ground to the ever encroaching trees. But down by the lake stands an old ice rink, built generations ago by the working men who founded this town. And in that ice rink is the reason people in Beartown believe tomorrow will be better than today. Their junior ice hockey team is about to compete in the national semi-finals, and they actually have a shot at winning. All the hopes and dreams of this place now rest on the shoulders of a handful of teenage boys.

Being responsible for the hopes of an entire town is a heavy burden, and the semi-final match is the catalyst for a violent act that will leave a young girl traumatized and a town in turmoil. Accusations are made and, like ripples on a pond, they travel through all of Beartown, leaving no resident unaffected.

Beartown explores the hopes that bring a small community together, the secrets that tear it apart, and the courage it takes for an individual to go against the grain. In this story of a small forest town, Fredrik Backman has found the entire world.

HOW IT MADE ME FEEL:

I don’t want to expose too much about the book or its central tragedy (although it gets foreshadowed fairly often and occurs fairly early in the book) because the unfolding of the plot and its characters was so meaningful to me. I will just say that despite how hard it was to read this book at times and the ugly underbelly of communities it exposed, this book was an amazing read. Highly recommended for anyone looking for a beautifully written book about a heavy topic.