A review by unlikelyplaces
Beartown by Fredrik Backman

5.0

Beartown - Fredrik Backman

⭐- 5

📱

I’m not even sure how to begin to review this book. This book had such a profound impact on me, I’m just going to gush about it.

I have enjoyed all of the Backman that I’ve read but none have impressed me as much as this. It would have been so easy to take this subject matter and write something completely bleak and hopeless, but Backman somehow managed to craft something so full of hope and empathy and understanding while never diminishing the gravity of the situation. He has such a unique perspective of how people function and their emotions, I’ve never seen an author write characters with such a level of understanding.

(This next paragraph may be considered spoilers but I think that it’s important that you know the subject matter of this book before going into it but just to warn you if you want to know nothing…)

Beartown is set in a small town that really hasn’t got much going for it apart from it’s love of hockey. Everyone in the town is obsessed with hockey and it’s the thing that keeps them all going. But things kick off when a s*xual assault is committed by one of the hockey players and then we follow the ways in which this affects the townspeople.

As I said, this would have been so easy to write something really bleak but the themes that Backman explores of loyalty, friendship, parenthood, family, and sports culture make it such a more interesting and rounded story than that. It’s a story that is filled with tragedy but also filled with healing and love and reflection and I thought it was so beautiful.

If I have any criticisms, I could understand people not liking Backman’s writing style. It does occasionally feel like “inspirational quotes” being inserted into the story at random points but that didn’t bother me and so much of what he has to say it so beautiful that I appreciated it.

And then Backman explores a lot of characters with a lot of prejudice and who say a lot of horrible things but there seems to be a weird underlying fatphobia which was unclear whether it was intended or not. I decided to give it the benefit of the doubt based on when it was released and the character’s perspectives but if you are particularly sensitive to that it’s something to be aware of.

So yes, easy 5 stars from me, I will definitely be getting to the rest of this series as soon as I’ve read some more of the books I already own…

Content warnings:

Obviously sxual assault (this does happen on page and is described), child d3ath, sucidal thoughts, self h@rm, alcoholism, homophobia, fatphobia, racism, bullying