After reading A Man Called Ove I was hooked and had to read everything I could get my hands on by Backman. I went on to read My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She's Sorry and now Beartown and I have Brit-marie Was Here waiting in my to-read pile. I am looking forward to getting a copy of And Every Morning The Way Home Gets Longer And Longer.
Backman writes in such a moving, real way. His characters and their flaws are so human and just get into the reader. Even the awful ones. And there are awful ones in this story.
The backdrop for the tale he spins in Beartown is a town wrapped up in its hockey league and how that makes, breaks, forms, and changes people. In a town where the economy has all but crashed there is still the hopes pinned on a boys hockey team (because girls don't get hockey). If the Junior Team can win the championship a school for hockey will come to Beartown and save them all. In building to this dream the boys are made to believe they are the end-all-be-all and entitled. And in this environment one young player sexually assaults a young girl.
The first half or so of the book leads up to this tragic and horrible event. The rest of the book is the fall out. What does it do to the young woman, the young man, the team, the town, the Hockey club....what does it mean to be a team, a family, a community? That is what is examined in Beartown. And it is painful and raw and infuriating. And so beautifully written.
Backman is an artist in making the reader think and question and look inside for their own reactions and feelings and examine them in light of the characters on the page.
So many residents of Beartown are more than they first appear and so many more are less. It is like the real world. People are seldom all that we think they are and sometimes those around us surprise us in the best or in the worst possible ways.
(Finished February 27, 2018)
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