Beartown by Fredrik Backman

Title: Beartown (Please note: an alternative title for this book is ‘The Scandal’)

Author: Fredrik Backman

Genre: Contemporary Fiction

Opens: Late one evening, toward the end of March, a teenager picked up a double-barrelled 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.

Blurb: People say Beartown is finished. A tiny Swedish community nestled deep in the forest, it is slowly losing ground to the ever encroaching trees. But down by the lake stands an old ice rink, built generations ago by the working men who founded this town. And in that ice rink is the reason people in Beartown believe tomorrow will be better than today. Their junior ice hockey team is about to compete in the national semi-finals, and they actually have a shot at winning. All the hopes and dreams of this place now rest on the shoulders of a handful of teenage boys. Being responsible for the hopes of an entire town is a heavy burden, and the semi-final match is the catalyst for a violent act that will leave a young girl traumatized and a town in turmoil.

My Thoughts: Although the events before, during and after an ice hockey match are the bones that the story is pinned on – the focus is NOT ice hockey. For which I was truly thankful because I know nothing about the game – other than it looks very dangerous! No, the book’s focus is on the individual characters that are directly involved, and also on the emotions of the township as a whole – this quote sums it up:

“…Hate can be a deeply stimulating emotion. The world becomes easier to understand and much less terrifying if you divide everything and everyone into friends and enemies, we and they, good and evil. The easiest way to unite a group isn’t through love, because love is hard, it makes demands. Hate is simple. So the first thing that happens in a conflict is that we choose a side, because that’s easier than trying to hold two thoughts in our heads at the same time. The second thing that happens is that we seek out facts that confirm what we want to believe – comforting facts, ones that permit life to go on as normal. The third is that we dehumanize our enemy…”

There is a diverse cast of characters and their different viewpoints are each recorded meticulously. Being a small isolated town in a remote area of Sweden the community of Beartown is tightly knit – they all know each other, and pull together to survive. The upcoming ice hockey match is currently the sole focus of the town, with the expected win to potentially turn the town fortunes around.

So, summed up, the hopes of the whole town all ride on the shoulder of one young star player. So when after a pre-match party he is accused of rape the focus of Beartown turns onto his alleged victim; she now becomes the only thing standing between Beartown finally declining and it’s rebirth as a society. You can imagine that sympathy is not a common thought towards her. The resulting furore becomes a catalyst for a very traumatic time for the community. With accusations and counter accusations flying; lies, innuendo and rumours being taken as fact – the citizens of Beartown almost immediately start to show their true colours and the lines are drawn. But what is more important – an ice hockey match or a human being? Friends become enemies, and enemies team up in a common cause. The many different actions taken are slowly woven together as each action causes a reaction that ripple-effects across the town and adds to the progress of the story. I became utterly engrossed as the story gradually unfolded.

Beartown was an emotional rollercoaster for me as my reactions to the events and conversations triggered my mood to swing from happy to angry to upset and back to happy again – sometimes in the same chapter! Often, the actions of the characters surprised me in how they reacted, especially when it was different to how I thought they should react. Beartown tackles some heavy issues – peer pressure, homophobia, rape culture and hero worship of sportsmen and women. All very current themes faced daily by different societies around the world.

An edge of the seat story – and, as I have said, an emotional rollercoaster that left me panting in exhaustion at the end.

For more about the author – Click Here

A – Excellent Stuff – a real page turner and hard to put down. I carved out extra reading time just so I could finish it. This book got carted into the bathroom with me, read over meals, read at work, and/or kept me up late at night. If this author has more work, I will certainly read it.

With thanks to Atria Books and the author via Netgalley for my copy to read and review.