Review by barath_6023 - Beartown

barath_6023 's review for:

Beartown by Fredrik Backman

4.0

emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

0/5 stars, there's not a single bear in Beartown. So misleading...

But really, when I first started reading, I kept losing track of the characters and as for some of them, I didn't think they'd be any interesting. How wrong I was. It took some time to find more details but at a point, I was interested in seeing more of their story.

The book is about hockey, but it's also about hockey culture. The story is also about the perils of sports obsession and putting people on pedestals. It gets murkier with discussions of whether hockey and sports, in general, exist in a vacuum. Almost every character's decisions are given unique motivations and reasoning, and that made it a lot more reflective. The collective, small-town nature of Beartown is evident in the people as well.

The writing sets the cold atmosphere of the town and in the people, and how they bring warmth to it. The diverse reactions of the people to the main turning point were well-explored and it all felt real. Empathy, apathy, hate, confusion....it was all there.

Content Warnings