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A review by averagemark
Beartown by Fredrik Backman
emotional
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
This isn't a book I would have normally picked up, but I had to read it for a book club. I didn't have high expectations for it, but let's just say it could have been worse.
As a person who normaly reads classics, the first thing that caught my eye was the writing style. From the very beginning, the author not only kept introducing more and more characters, but also kept switching between them, and between different time frames. Just in one chaper you could visit 5 households and learn about each person's childhood and teenage years. That was quite confusing for me, I often had to go back and try to figure out who exactly are we talking about, but other people that I duscussed this book with didn't seem to mind that style of writing.
This books starts off as story about a hockey town, but insted of telling us about hockey games and preparations for them, it tells us about the players of the hockey team, the residents of the town, the parents, the teens. The focus of the book slowly shifts from hockey problems to a much bigger social problem in the community. Pause on the word slowly, because 40% of the book was just the author setting the scenery. The actual "main event" in the book didn't happen until we were about 200 pages in.
Why did i give this book 3 stars? Well in my oppinion, the author took more than he could chew. He introduced a lot of characters, presented us with a lot of social problems, and left a lot of them unresolved. The other problem was the writing, at some parts I felt like the story was being dragged on with tons of unnecessary information. And in the end, the book really wasn't for me. I never really liked social novels. What, in my oppinion, the author managed to do well was convŠµing the tention of a hockey game. Some parts might have been dragged on, but in other, I felt the cold Beartown air on my face. You can never tell with this book.
To sum this review up, I can't say that I loved this novel. It didn't stick with me, but it's not bad either. Just not something I would usually read ))
As a person who normaly reads classics, the first thing that caught my eye was the writing style. From the very beginning, the author not only kept introducing more and more characters, but also kept switching between them, and between different time frames. Just in one chaper you could visit 5 households and learn about each person's childhood and teenage years. That was quite confusing for me, I often had to go back and try to figure out who exactly are we talking about, but other people that I duscussed this book with didn't seem to mind that style of writing.
This books starts off as story about a hockey town, but insted of telling us about hockey games and preparations for them, it tells us about the players of the hockey team, the residents of the town, the parents, the teens. The focus of the book slowly shifts from hockey problems to a much bigger social problem in the community. Pause on the word slowly, because 40% of the book was just the author setting the scenery. The actual "main event" in the book didn't happen until we were about 200 pages in.
Why did i give this book 3 stars? Well in my oppinion, the author took more than he could chew. He introduced a lot of characters, presented us with a lot of social problems, and left a lot of them unresolved. The other problem was the writing, at some parts I felt like the story was being dragged on with tons of unnecessary information. And in the end, the book really wasn't for me. I never really liked social novels. What, in my oppinion, the author managed to do well was convŠµing the tention of a hockey game. Some parts might have been dragged on, but in other, I felt the cold Beartown air on my face. You can never tell with this book.
To sum this review up, I can't say that I loved this novel. It didn't stick with me, but it's not bad either. Just not something I would usually read ))
Content Warnings
Graphic: Rape, Cursing, Sexual violence, and Sexual harassment
Moderate: Alcoholism, Homophobia, Alcohol, and Bullying
Minor: Child abuse and Child death