To be able to make viewers cry during a TV scene with sappy music, emotional characters and very tense visual moments is one thing.
To be able to make readers cry with printed words laying flat on a page though is an art that very few authors master. Fredrik Backman is one of them.
Beartown is a story about a small town deep in a Swedish forest on a brink of economic collapse, falling into oblivion until its junior ice hockey team makes it to the national semifinals. The sport unites Beartown’s residents over the vision and hope for a revival the victory could mean and bring. But the high pressure and immense burden to win will lead to a violent act off the ice that will swiftly change everything and tear the town apart.
This book is not like Backman’s other uplifting fictions. Beartown is darker, more sorrowful, more grounded. And in a typical Backman manner, the story is not really about ice hockey—it’s about people, community, friendships and their importance and limits.
Backman created a town of the most realistic and relatable characters, somehow able to make me care for most of them, to hate the rest, but most importantly to remember them all. All characters are essential. Every one of them have a backstory of their own. None of them are perfect. That’s what makes them real.
Backman possesses this magical power: he pulls readers into the story with his witty storytelling and doesn’t let go. He nonchalantly shares wisdom in one paragraph just to reinforce it in another in ways so logical that it makes the whole story come together. Beartown made me emotional, made me cringe and gasp, made me feel what the characters felt and left me heartbroken for the ice hockey town I unexpectedly fell in love with.
That’s the thing about Backman’s books. You don’t read them, you live them.
By the time the last paragraph comes along the characters are real—our neighbors in town none of us have ever been to, but all of us lived in rent-free for the duration of the book. It’s a good thing there is a sequel. And only if we are lucky, the third book will come along later in 2021.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ / ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️