“Late one evening toward the end of March, a teenager picked up a double-barreled 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 beginning of Beartown by Fredrik Backman is simplistic, but surprising and packed with restrained emotion, just like the rest of the following novel.
On the surface, Beartown is about hockey, which is something I couldn’t care less about, but under that it’s really about people; complicated, realistic people with the depth and confusion and flaws of every human.
The story follows a small town in the middle of a forest who’s only excitement is hockey. The junior ice hockey team is set to compete in the national semifinals, and the town banks their future on the shot of confidence and the economical infusion that could come from a win.
But having an entire town’s future resting on the shoulders of a bunch of teenage boys is too much when a sudden, violent act off the rink changes everything that happens on it.
Backman builds his book based on characters who read like real people, tucked away and supplying these tales to the author for him to write and pass as fiction. They are people filled with flaws that you can’t fully hate because they aren’t all bad, nor all good, they are real and convincing.
Beartown is only the start of the story and the newly released sequel Us Against You is a requirement to see the aftermath of what happens before the semi-finals.
Truthfully, a book with hockey in the storyline would end up right back on the shelf for me, but having read Backman’s work before, I devour his novels, and Beartown and Us Against You are no different.
He’s a master of character development and writes with such a frankness that is perfectly captured in the first page of Beartown. His writing isn’t flowery, but simplistic and beautiful in its own way, much like the towns he depicts. He head-on addresses issues throughout society through the example of his fictional one whether it is violence, struggles with personal identity, or friendship.
I’ll continue to pick up his novels, whether about hockey or anything else, because I know that whatever the storyline, his characters will be rich and deep, and addictively reveal human nature. Whether Beartown and its sequel or one of his other books, his work is a must read. If hockey is a put-off, A Man Called Ove, Britt-Marie Was Here, and My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She’s Sorry all ring with his deft hand on human nature and rich character development.
Each one, including these newest tales, are high-quality, five-star reads that re-invigorated me on what novels hold.