Beartown
Ratings339
Average rating4.4
I will not be rating this because 1. I can not know what to rate this book b. I wanted to read a book for personal enjoyment instead of obsessing over the rating I'd give.
This is technically my second book by the author, as I had dnf'ed a man called ove. This took me a bit by surprise and inserted me into the story. I laughed, well, didn't exactly cry, but my heart broke so many times for some of the characters while I wanted to kill others.
An amazing story that keeps you turning pages. It will infuriate you, make you smile, and make you sad. The way the Backman links his characters and seamless intertwines his characters is almost unmatched.
Great read. Revenant plot and a story that all of our children should read!
Sharing a name with one of the characters in a Fredrik Backman book is a blessing and a curse. What a read.
Well written on extremely difficult topic. Perhaps not the best bedtime reading, but captured some very true psychological experiences, and I appreciate the validation. I kinda hate the town(sfolk), but love the HECK out of Ramona. I hope to see a lot more of her in the next books.
Reminded me in some senses of Dogville. Partner complained about lack of attention on goalies. I just worry a tad whether the book gives the sport in general a bit of bad reputation. (I play a lot and live in towns with leagues, but not too personally familiar with small towns or “clubs”. Write in sport of your choice, basically. Aside from touching on the expense of great for the sport, it was pretty light on hockey.
If books can be described as windows or mirrors then for me this book falls into the windows category as I would have never chosen to read this book if it wasn't selected by the bookclub. I am pleased it was as I think its a brilliant work of literary fiction. I am happy to categorize it as that because of the literary touches such as some characters are referred to but are never given names: the colleague, the girlfriend (and before I could think its a gender thing0 the guy in the black Saab). The focus on a sports team but without encountering a game until a quarter of the way through the story.
I loved how all the book is all about the small town and hockey and how its all a matter of clichés: its all about the team, were are a hockey town, etc but also interrogates what those trite basis for your life end up meaning. The story focuses on the relationships to each other, some helpful, some negative (making your your son walk miles home through snow because he got lost at a market and was 5 minutes late returning to the car is a dick move Kevin's Dad) and how these can change. Also kudos for choosing to show just how shit the legal/police system is when it comes to rape. Author could have chosen to put a spin on it but no one I know or respect believes the police/legal system are anything but shit when it comes to this.
As I mentioned its a bookclub book so I won't record much here but it was a suprisingly engaging worthwhile read for me.
Certainly didn't have “tearing up over a hockey novel” in my plans for today, but here we are.
Bachman writes regular people beautifully - we all know these people, they might be our relative, and they absolutely inhabit his novels. This is a book about sports but only barely - it's actually a book about what happens when the right thing isn't the popular thing; when the right thing has a cost; when knowing the right thing and doing the right thing are two very different choices. It's a book about choices and consequences, and all those two things entail. Powerful and hard to forget.
I love how this book explores the double edged nature of loyalty. How such an admirable trait can also cause so much destruction. Backman is one of my favourite authors and this book is another reason why. Looking forward to getting my hands on the sequel.
I've really enjoyed other books by Fredrik Backman and his writing never fails to speak to me. I wasn't super into the plot of this one not being a hockey fan (or sports fan in general), but there were a lot of passages and moments I really liked. I did go into this thinking my heart was going to shatter completely... I think I made it more devastating in my mind than it turned out to be.
I've read a few of Blackman's books so I entered this one with expectations of the same quirky humour and quiet observations about human relationships and the nature of love. But this is not like the other novels. Unlike A Man Called Ove, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry or Anxious People, all of which deal with the pain of loss and finding new hope, this book is about violence.
This is an angry, angry Backman writing this story. The basic premise is simple enough: what happens when a star athlete in a small town gets accused of sexual assault? Backman explores the ways that loyalty, fear, pride, hope and, yes, violence, drive people's reactions and responses. In Beartown, the people love their hockey team and have pinned to it their hopes for economic recovery after shifting market conditions have resulted in lost jobs. Now, perceived as a depressed (and depressing) backwater in comparison to the more successful town of Hed just down the road, Beartown needs a miracle, and what better than the promise of an almost supernaturally talented young player to lead the team to the national title? Surely all good things will flow from that. Surely nothing must get in the way of that for the life of the town depends upon it.
But Backman isn't taking the side of the town in this novel. He looks instead at how these kinds of pressures and forces create the conditions for violence of many kinds: sexual violence, physical violence, psychological violence, and epistemological violence. He explores how otherwise good, right thinking, honest people with conflicting loyalties allow their fear, pride, hopes and needs to cloud their objectivity. And just as he explores violence, Backman also deftly shows how fear begets fear, and how lies beget blindness.
Sexual violence is not the stuff of comic novels so Backman wisely tones down his trademark wry humour but leaves much of his wit and charm, a tough balance to maintain. What humour there is gets expression in the eccentricities of Ramona, the bar owner, the town's drunken Diogenes who literally has to slap the truth into a wavering friend when he refuses to see it.
Interesting to note that Backman wrote two sequels to this novel. Clearly the themes he wished to develop were greater than could be accommodated in one novel and it's no surprise given the subject matter. He only touches the surface on questions of healing, recovery and growth and I'm sure seeks to examine the aftermath of explosive events such as the ones at the heart of this novel.
I will have to live with this book for a while before I can turn to the sequels. Living in a hockey town myself, and through my job as an educator, I have witnessed the corrosive effects of the idolizing of athletes. I have seen how people lose perspective and I have seen how adolescents with very little understanding of who they are suddenly find themselves thrust into the adoring spotlight of small-scale fame. Backman does an excellent job of depicting this situation and like all good writers holds a mirror to his time and place to show us how we really look. It's up to you to decide if you like what you see.
4.5/5– A beautiful and emotional story trapped inside a book about hockey. I absolutely love where the story of Beartown goes. Like other Backman books, every character is complex and interesting; it's hard to not imagine the residents having their discussions right in front of you, as though you were a fly on the wall. However, Beartown took me a while to complete. I found a few sections of the first half of the book too slow. I'm not a huge sports fan, and I was assured that you didn't have to be interested in hockey to appreciate this book, but there are a lot of passages about hockey– players practicing hockey, competing in hockey games, discussing careers in hockey, raising sponsor money for hockey, fans watching hockey– it's a lot of hockey. “Beartown is a hockey town,” could not be more true, and I appreciate how important the sport is in this fictional town, but it's a place I just know I would not fit in. I was glad to see that much of the conflict of the story involves an issue that I think many people need to reflect on: victim blaming. Just like in so many real-life cases, much of the conflict could be avoided by remaining calm, listening to the victim, and trying to help them heal. Sometimes there isn't enough evidence to prove a victim's case, and that's always going to be a possibility, but no one is helped by making the life of an already suffering person worse through harassment and scare tactics. A passage that will continue to stick with me is: “She will always be this to them now: at best the girl who got raped, at worst the girl who lied. They will never let her be anyone but that. In every room, on every street, in the supermarket and at the rink, she will walk in like an explosive device. They will be scared to touch her, even the ones who believe her, because they don't want to risk getting hit by shrapnel when she detonates. They will back away in silence, turn in a different direction. They will wish that she would just disappear, that she had never been here. Not because they hate her, because they don't, not all of them: they don't all scrawl BITCH on her locker, they don't all rape her, they aren't all evil. But they're all silent. Because that's easier.”I think there is a lot to learn from this situation and it reminds us that we just need to have compassion. People who have experienced trauma are not landmines, they do not need to be avoided at all costs. Just like everyone else, they need to be cared for. I didn't think I would finish this novel, and I certainly didn't think I would read its sequels, but I absolutely plan on doing so now. After this, [b:Anxious People 53799686 Anxious People Fredrik Backman https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1594234890l/53799686.SX50.jpg 67840009], and [b:A Man Called Ove 18774964 A Man Called Ove Fredrik Backman https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1405259930l/18774964.SY75.jpg 21619954], Frederik Backman is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors!
This was a good book but was also frustrating. The first quarter was just introducing people and the setting. There were so many POV's that it was hard to keep track for awhile. The adults in the book were what was frustrating. Why would anyone ever feel okay with acting the way they did? I know it's just a book, but dang.
Ensimmäisenä minun on hieman pakko valittaa yhdestä isosta asiasta, mikä on monien suomeksi kirjoitettujen (oli se käännös tai alkuperäinen teksti) kirjojen ongelma. Nimittäin tippua EI OLE sama asia kuin pudota. Odotan päivää, jolloin kirjoituksen parissa olevat ihmiset ymmärtävät tämän.
Tässä kirjassa näitä nimittäin käytetään kumpaakin sekaisin ja siitäkös minä menin sekaisin. Todella raivostuttavaa, mutta kyse on nyt suomentajan tekemästä virheestä eikä niinkään alkuperäisen kirjailijan.
Kirja oli ihan ok. Olin lähinnä hämmentynyt, miten paljon IG:ssä tätä hehkutetaan, enkä nyt nähnyt, että tämä niin erikoinen olisi ollut. Idea oli hauska. Pienen kaupungin elämä pyörii heidän oman jääkiekkojoukkueen ympärillä. Kirjaa kerrotaan tämän harrastuksen ympärillä ja niiden ihmisten silmin, joita tämä koskettaa. Samalla koko kaupunkia ravistelee skandaali, mikä saa monet hahmot miettimään itseään, tulevaisuuttaan sekä jääkiekkoseuran jatkoa.
Kuunnellessa oli välillä vaikea seurata tarinaa. Hahmot välillä sekoittuivat toisiinsa ja siksi en ehkä kokenut tätä niin erikoisena. Samoin hieman ärsytti kokoaikainen “tämä on kiekkokaupunki”-hokeminen sekä huumeiden ylenpalttinen romantisointi.
Magnificently crafted masterpiece! How can Frederick Beckman write about such heavy topics in such a way that we find no fault to any sides? How is he such a master storyteller? Some chapters end in cliffhangers and the story might continue only a few chapters later but still feel seamless. There are many points of view which gets confusing at first, because of the number of characters in this book and it starts out slow because it is trying to set the scene for a town that revolves around its hockey and its hockey players. This book might come to be known as a classic in the future, the author captures complex human emotions and moral grey areas so well. Listened to the audiobook version, and the narrator did an outstanding job!
OMFG!!!
One of those books that makes you want to lower the ratings of every other book you have ever read.
I was sobbing for good five minutes after I finished reading this book. Not because it was sad, it wasn't, but because it was so good! Right in the feelings!
I wish I could write like Fredrik... suck
Wowie. I demolished this book. Very well-written about such nuanced topics. I'm not sure how one tackles class, race, privilege, abuse, queerness and small-town loyalty all in one book and still have it be cohesive, but this book did it.
It felt very true and very real and also very bittersweet. There were many hard pills to swallow but the author didn't feel the need to clean them away, which I appreciated.
Not sure I need more books in the series—not sure there even needed to be a series?? But this one is perfect.
2.5/5 stars
Dnfed around chapter 24. I was frustrated at the character development of some of the characters.