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allieeveryday 's review for:
Us Against You
by Fredrik Backman
This was not as good as Beartown. I didn't even get mad at Matt once!
Pretty early on in the book, I had a thought: I don't know how Backman manages to break my heart and irritate the crap out of me in the same sentence. He continued to do that throughout the book; his omniscient narrator kept dragging me out of the story, and his continual fake-outs drove me nuts. He couldn't be trusted to just tell the story. It made me wonder if it had been translated by someone different, but nope. Same author, same translator. I would have made some different editorial decisions, but no one asked my opinion.
Even so, Backman still knows how to make tears spring to my eyes, even if I'm not letting them fall or yelling at my husband because MEN. I'm a different person than I was when I read Beartown. I have a better understanding and appreciation of some of these characters, and a different understanding of grief and community. Maybe that's ruined me for the ways Backman has previously been able to rip my heart out, or maybe I just didn't need a sequel to Beartown and no sequel was ever going to be as good as the original.
Pretty early on in the book, I had a thought: I don't know how Backman manages to break my heart and irritate the crap out of me in the same sentence. He continued to do that throughout the book; his omniscient narrator kept dragging me out of the story, and his continual fake-outs drove me nuts. He couldn't be trusted to just tell the story. It made me wonder if it had been translated by someone different, but nope. Same author, same translator. I would have made some different editorial decisions, but no one asked my opinion.
Even so, Backman still knows how to make tears spring to my eyes, even if I'm not letting them fall or yelling at my husband because MEN. I'm a different person than I was when I read Beartown. I have a better understanding and appreciation of some of these characters, and a different understanding of grief and community. Maybe that's ruined me for the ways Backman has previously been able to rip my heart out, or maybe I just didn't need a sequel to Beartown and no sequel was ever going to be as good as the original.