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4.42 AVERAGE
4.42 AVERAGE
challenging
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Den är så bra. Älskar hur den är skriven, den berör så mycket. Allas öden, alla lager i människorna, inget är enkelt liksom och allt har så många sidor och han skriver om just det så bra. Tyckte till och med denna var bättre än den första. Den blev på något sätt djupare och blev ännu mer berörd nu när jag liksom känner alla. Den första är mer riktad till en händelse, men denna är lite mer spridd, men på ett bra sätt.
emotional
hopeful
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
It's weird how an author with such an impressive ability to create realistic and touching characters out of empathic description is so bad at writing dialogue.
For every paragraph divulging a person’s innermost humanity, convincing the reader as to why they should care about them, or bringing tears to their eyes with the simple tragedy of the proceedings, there is another instance of so clichéd dialogue that it doesn’t sound at all how the author had just described the emotions between the people, so that I ended up yearning for less dialogue and more description.
Still, Backman is great at what he does the best, and that is weaving a complex web of conflicting interests and empathising with each and every single one of the people within it, even the worst ones.
Hell, the worst ones might be the ones he has the most empathy for, chewed up and spit out by life cruel and merciless because they don't know how to survive otherwise.
But it's not just that - the book successfully tackles several important themes, including rape culture and the way we can hurt rape survivors more after the fact than during; homophobia and its strangling of the soul, but also how many different places it can come from, be it selfishness or plain ignorance or the need to belong with people who are worse than you; and the larger political theme of populism and the politicisation of hatred; but not just complaining about how there's too much politics everywhere, but being sharply critical of what it actually means when people say that - and how often it’s just a sign of their own hypocrisy because of course there’s always politics in everything, even if you think there isn’t (because that usually just means that it’s your politics that dominate, and you’re pretty fine with that).
It's no coincidence that the worst person in the book is a politician who believes in nothing but gaining power and hence after initial uncertainty quickly does become the worst person in the book; though of course, even for him Backman has some empathy. Just not nearly as much as the poor and the abused and the children and the innocents caught up in the fires the man has instigated for his own personal gain, with zero consideration to the well-being of anybody else, these beings he sees as inherently lower; and sometimes, it almost feels, like not even for himself - the madness for power eats us all.
Backman does occasionally err (and not just in dialogues), and the increasingly annoying quirk of his is to build up a whole background for the death of somebody that shouldn’t die, milking it for as much as he can, including insinuations that he then slyly retcons, after the person is revealed not to have died at all, proving also that he’s not really capable of being as consistently merciless to his characters as he threatens to be.
But then every time I got annoyed with him for such cheap manipulation, there came another moment of such powerful understanding of being alive and human, that my eyes could barely stay dry (and not always did), and I just can't carry this anger for long.
Nor can Backman, it seems, and perhaps none of us should. Behind every monster, there's a reason for their existence. It doesn't mean we should necessarily forgive and forget, but life is more complicated than the opportunists looking for easy gains would like us to believe, and that applies to any situation, be it politics or everyday life.
The worst thing is to react without thinking, without empathy.
That's why the lie has run circles around the house before truth has time to put its pants on:
Because it's so much easier to just live out your feelings rather than to control them; and truth can be so much less meaningful than the lie.
But it's the truth that matters; and Backman’s again reminding us how important it is to be human, and to remember that so are others.
It's just a game; it's just a life.
For every paragraph divulging a person’s innermost humanity, convincing the reader as to why they should care about them, or bringing tears to their eyes with the simple tragedy of the proceedings, there is another instance of so clichéd dialogue that it doesn’t sound at all how the author had just described the emotions between the people, so that I ended up yearning for less dialogue and more description.
Still, Backman is great at what he does the best, and that is weaving a complex web of conflicting interests and empathising with each and every single one of the people within it, even the worst ones.
Hell, the worst ones might be the ones he has the most empathy for, chewed up and spit out by life cruel and merciless because they don't know how to survive otherwise.
But it's not just that - the book successfully tackles several important themes, including rape culture and the way we can hurt rape survivors more after the fact than during; homophobia and its strangling of the soul, but also how many different places it can come from, be it selfishness or plain ignorance or the need to belong with people who are worse than you; and the larger political theme of populism and the politicisation of hatred; but not just complaining about how there's too much politics everywhere, but being sharply critical of what it actually means when people say that - and how often it’s just a sign of their own hypocrisy because of course there’s always politics in everything, even if you think there isn’t (because that usually just means that it’s your politics that dominate, and you’re pretty fine with that).
It's no coincidence that the worst person in the book is a politician who believes in nothing but gaining power and hence after initial uncertainty quickly does become the worst person in the book; though of course, even for him Backman has some empathy. Just not nearly as much as the poor and the abused and the children and the innocents caught up in the fires the man has instigated for his own personal gain, with zero consideration to the well-being of anybody else, these beings he sees as inherently lower; and sometimes, it almost feels, like not even for himself - the madness for power eats us all.
Backman does occasionally err (and not just in dialogues), and the increasingly annoying quirk of his is to build up a whole background for the death of somebody that shouldn’t die, milking it for as much as he can, including insinuations that he then slyly retcons, after the person is revealed not to have died at all, proving also that he’s not really capable of being as consistently merciless to his characters as he threatens to be.
But then every time I got annoyed with him for such cheap manipulation, there came another moment of such powerful understanding of being alive and human, that my eyes could barely stay dry (and not always did), and I just can't carry this anger for long.
Nor can Backman, it seems, and perhaps none of us should. Behind every monster, there's a reason for their existence. It doesn't mean we should necessarily forgive and forget, but life is more complicated than the opportunists looking for easy gains would like us to believe, and that applies to any situation, be it politics or everyday life.
The worst thing is to react without thinking, without empathy.
That's why the lie has run circles around the house before truth has time to put its pants on:
Because it's so much easier to just live out your feelings rather than to control them; and truth can be so much less meaningful than the lie.
But it's the truth that matters; and Backman’s again reminding us how important it is to be human, and to remember that so are others.
It's just a game; it's just a life.
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I didn't love this quite as much as Beartown. I immediately started reading this after Beartown, and it felt quite repetitive at the start as it was reminding readers of what happened in Beartown. I did get into Us Against You after the reminders were out of the way though.
Loved it!
I really enjoyed Beartown and I was a little nervous to read the sequel since it is sometimes hard to live up to such a successful first book. I am so happy to report that I loved this book just as much, if not more! I loved reading about what happened in Beartown after book #1. I loved catching up with the characters and enjoyed meeting a few new characters.
I am relatively new to Backman's work, and I am finding his writing to be very insightful. There are times when I read a sentence and go back and read it again slowly to let it sink in. I love that in a book.
Overall, this was a fantastic sequel to Beartown and I would highly recommend both books to any reader.
Borrowed audio book from the library
I really enjoyed Beartown and I was a little nervous to read the sequel since it is sometimes hard to live up to such a successful first book. I am so happy to report that I loved this book just as much, if not more! I loved reading about what happened in Beartown after book #1. I loved catching up with the characters and enjoyed meeting a few new characters.
I am relatively new to Backman's work, and I am finding his writing to be very insightful. There are times when I read a sentence and go back and read it again slowly to let it sink in. I love that in a book.
Overall, this was a fantastic sequel to Beartown and I would highly recommend both books to any reader.
Borrowed audio book from the library
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes