Beartown

Excellent, recommend

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.

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

Kannte ich Backman vorher nur als FeelGood Autor, hat mich dieses Buch echt überrascht. Irgendwie düster und nüchtern, mit einen Funken Hoffnung. Klasse.

Nicht vom deutschen Titel abschrecken lassen. Hört sich an wie Rosamunde Pilcher ist aber eher “13 Reasons why” oder ein Kleinstadt “The Wire”

This is a difficult book to rate. There are many positive and negatives. On the negative side, like in The man called Ove, the book is full of cliches and the characters all do dumb things, so the reader can see from a mile away where the things are going. This aspect makes the plot almost amateurish. On the positive side, I have to be honest with myself and admit that I could not put the book down and I wanted to know how it ended...