Reviews with content warning for Body shaming - Beartown

Reviews tagging 'Body shaming'

Beartown by Fredrik Backman

68 reviews

melv32's review against another edition

2.75

challenging dark tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

yulecogs's review against another edition

4.5

emotional sad slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

briemont5's review against another edition

5.0

dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I am way late to the game, but I finished Beartown today. If you haven’t read it, it’s highly recommended. Yeah, it’s great because it revolves around hockey. But it does so much more than that.

If you’re moderately involved in hockey, you know each of these characters in real life. It’s a good social commentary on toxic masculinity, small town mentality, blind devotion that comes with team mentality, and the pressure of youth sports. It’s a beautifully told story about how something we love has such an ugly side.

Content Warnings

leonormsousa's review against another edition

5.0

dark emotional mysterious tense slow-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

I think the best word to describe what Beartown was to me is unexpected. Not unexpected in terms of quality (I mean I had seen how much Sara from @book.vorfreude loved it and she has great taste so I was already expecting to love it as well) but pretty much in every other sense of the word.

I went in without knowing much about the book and I think that’s the best way to go. The synopsis is kind of vague (which I very much approve of in this case) and there’s not even a genre that you can quite attribute to the book. Even after reading it, it’s hard to describe what this book is about. What I can say is that it is, at its very core, a book about humans. And a delicious one indeed.

Beartown is most definitely a slow burner. For the first half of the book, it feels like nothing’s happening. But, surprise, surprise: it’s only the great (and very much needed) set-up for what is to come. You spend 200 pages getting to know these characters, their history, their passions, their goals and wishes, and what drives them. You create empathy with all of them. And then, Backman slowly “breaks” them, one by one.

I got to tell you, this book was definitely one of the most violently emotional books I’ve ever read. It got to a point where I was crying almost every chapter (and I’m not even an easy crier). And the reason why it was so is that it felt so absolutely REAL. Every character, every action, every plot line. There are many great things about this book, but I believe this is the biggest one.

Backman’s writing is quite simple, yet very peculiar. The sentences in Beartown are short and concise. Almost like they’re just stating facts, one after the other. At the same time, we’re constantly skipping points of view, with our third-person narrator following an enormous amount of characters (I would say we follow about 5-10 more closely, but maybe 20+ in total). So, it’s rather curious how with both these characteristics, they are still able to capture the essence of each character so well. I, personally, quite enjoyed this writing style, although I can see why some people wouldn’t.

Although there were several topics in Beartown that I found tremendously interesting, the one that took the biggest toll on me was the family/parenthood relationships. I won’t develop this a lot because I don’t think I can do it without spoiling anything, but this was definitely a topic that I hadn’t seen explored before, at least not in this way. In particular, seeing the reciprocity of pain and protectiveness. How there’s never just one victim, how trauma is something that propagates through your loved ones. It was just heartbreaking. Something I’m looking forward to reading more about (a bit of a masochist, aren’t I?!).

Finally, to close this already too big review: I am obviously very much excited to read other Backman’s books, although I heard that this one is completely different from the others. I also know that there is a sequel to Beartown already published and a final one yet to be translated but tbh I’m not super eager to read them just because this works so well as a standalone and I don’t want to ruin it. I’ll still probably do it though, eventually... And of course, thank you to Sara for recommending this one!

REP: gay MC, arab MC

Content Warnings

sofie1705's review against another edition

5.0

challenging dark emotional funny hopeful reflective sad tense

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

lesbianvvampire's review against another edition

5.0

adventurous challenging dark emotional reflective tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

this is one of the best books that i have ever read. backman is a wonderful author who touches on emotional and dark topics in such a unique and humanising way.

Content Warnings

hansolitude's review against another edition

5.0

challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

megansmith's review against another edition

4.5

challenging dark emotional sad tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

The writing in this book is well done - for having so many characters, its easy to follow who is who and remember each of their stories as the focus constantly shifts. Even some of the worst characters could be seen as products of their environments rather than generic representations of people. If you love digging into character backstories and psychologies, this is a great read. I have a hard time finding reasons to critique this book, my only cons were

the discourse the characters had around the rape was hard to read, but only because it was (unfortunately) realistic to what youd expect in real life to hear in this kind of scenario. It doesnt make it any easier to read, but I give props to the author for the realism.

My only other critique is it was sometimes difficult to get a sense of Beartown’s location - we got the sense some of Peter and Kita’s life was in Canada, but with the mention of moving to North America later on in the book, I got the sense this town isnt actually in Canada. Could be some late night reading confusion, but also this town could be in so many places. Overall its a well written, hard to believe its fiction novel. A hard read for sure but thought provoking if you can read it.

Content Warnings

chamaeleontis's review against another edition

5.0

dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

calamari's review against another edition

5.0

challenging dark emotional inspiring 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

fredrik blackman manages to capture the beauty and brokenness of being human in this story. it’s a book about hockey in a small town but it’s not. it’s about the choices we make as individuals, the stories those choices stem from and the ones they leave in their wake. it’s about darkness and pain and injustice, but it’s more about family and loyalty and love. it shows us we are all flawed, biased, selfish, for different reasons at different times, but it shows us that deep down, if we have the courage to look, we may find we have the strength to do what is good and what is right despite all that stands against us. chock full of tears and laughter. my favorite novel.

Content Warnings

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