arielzeit 's review for:

Us Against You by Fredrik Backman

4.0

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I'll pretty much read everything that Backman writes because he touches on such universal themes in a fluent, unpretentious way. The problem isn't that it's about a small town in Sweden that's obsessed with high school hockey. Because as one reviewer said about this book in the Washington Post, "Backman writes about hockey the way Balzac writes about, say, the French military, meaning that his point lies far from his subject. Backman’s novels have wide appeal, and for good reason. 'Us Against You' takes a lyrical look at how a community heals, how families recover and how individuals grow." And the first one was ostensibly about hockey too. But this book was not as good as the first one because the plot gets too melodramatic. Also, too many of the characters are defined as having happy endings. When you're telling a story with so very many intensely conflicted, emotionally driven characters, it's better to leave the reader with some happy endings, some bad ones and some unresolved ones. Too many happy endings cheapens the story and makes it feel a little like an afterschool special. Still, I can't help hoping for a third Beartown book.