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A review by bealmg
Beartown - A cidade dos grandes sonhos by Fredrik Backman
dark
emotional
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.0
I have a lot of mixed feelings about this book. On one hand, I appreciated the themes it explored. On the other hand, I disliked its structure and the author's writing style.
Let's start by what I disliked. First, the enormous cast of characters. While this is a book about a town and its people, it didn't need to delve into the minds of so many characters, many of which added very little to the actual plot. It literally shoved in the reader's face that this was a book about a small town where everybody knows everybody and hockey is the one thing that keeps the town alive.
This is tied to the way the book is structured. At first, I thought it was interesting, but an entire book composed of snippets of characters' lives and thoughts quickly became repetitive. Because of this, the reader doesn't get to spend enough time with the main characters and each character felt incomplete by the end of the book. Besides that, on a few particularly emotional plot points , the snippets become shorter and manipulative, the narrator leading you to think something terrible is going to happen and then it doesn't (like when Zacharias enters the school and the reader thinks he'll kill himself, only to find out he cleaned Maya's locker; Maya pointing a gun at Kevin but not killing him in the end ).
Lastly, I really didn't like the writing style. It's full of aphorisms that are clearly meant to be thought-provoking, but instead tell the reader what to think and feel about the story (as opposed to, you know, letting the readers decide for themselves). I also didn't appreciate the heavy and way-too-obvious foreshadowing, which removed the tension from the story, as well as the insights into what these characters would feel and think about in the future. As a reader, I felt that I was too often told what the characters felt instead of shown what they were feeling. It was exhausting having a narrator constantly tell me things that I wanted to piece together myself.
Now, onto what I liked (but also felt could have been better). I liked the themes of the book. The small town experience and its sports culture (with its inherent violence, sexism, xenophobia and homophobia) was a really interesting theme to explore, but I feel like Backman tried too hard to write about everything that nothing felt truly, completely, deeply explored, partly because of the way he structured this book. And although it made me think about my own experiences living in a country obsessed with football (or soccer, whatever you call it), I felt that it added nothing new to the discussion.
Let's start by what I disliked. First, the enormous cast of characters. While this is a book about a town and its people, it didn't need to delve into the minds of so many characters, many of which added very little to the actual plot. It literally shoved in the reader's face that this was a book about a small town where everybody knows everybody and hockey is the one thing that keeps the town alive.
This is tied to the way the book is structured. At first, I thought it was interesting, but an entire book composed of snippets of characters' lives and thoughts quickly became repetitive. Because of this, the reader doesn't get to spend enough time with the main characters and each character felt incomplete by the end of the book. Besides that, on a few particularly emotional plot points , the snippets become shorter and manipulative, the narrator leading you to think something terrible is going to happen and then it doesn't (
Lastly, I really didn't like the writing style. It's full of aphorisms that are clearly meant to be thought-provoking, but instead tell the reader what to think and feel about the story (as opposed to, you know, letting the readers decide for themselves). I also didn't appreciate the heavy and way-too-obvious foreshadowing, which removed the tension from the story, as well as the insights into what these characters would feel and think about in the future. As a reader, I felt that I was too often told what the characters felt instead of shown what they were feeling. It was exhausting having a narrator constantly tell me things that I wanted to piece together myself.
Now, onto what I liked (but also felt could have been better). I liked the themes of the book. The small town experience and its sports culture (with its inherent violence, sexism, xenophobia and homophobia) was a really interesting theme to explore, but I feel like Backman tried too hard to write about everything that nothing felt truly, completely, deeply explored, partly because of the way he structured this book. And although it made me think about my own experiences living in a country obsessed with football (or soccer, whatever you call it), I felt that it added nothing new to the discussion.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Rape and Sexual violence
Moderate: Xenophobia, Homophobia, and Sexism
Minor: Vomit, Child death, and Grief