It's Just Hockey

Beartown, Us Against You, and The Winners are a trilogy by Fredrik Backman about a Swedish hockey town named Beartown. They're deep in the north, surrounded by forests, and the people the only thing the people there care more about than the Beartown Hockey Club is beating the Hed Hockey Club (the club belonging to the town directly south of Beartown). The inhabitants of Beartown are rattled from rivalries, secrets, violence, accusations, and truths.

I was able to get a full trilogy e-book copy of this book from the library, which means I basically read it as a complete unit over the frozen weekend in Texas. I don't want to do a specific review for each book, so I'm going talk about what I loved about the whole trilogy instead. I gave every one of these books a 5 star rating, you can read my Kindle Notes and Highlights here, and I cannot recommend this series more.

“The only thing the sport gives us are moments.

But what the hell is life, Peter, apart from moments?”

This is not my first experience with Fredrik Backman's books, and I doubt it'll be the last, so I did know that I'd enjoy this series going into it. I love the way Backman writes. It's like each chapter has a reflective thesis and then we work our way through various characters in order to prove the point. I think some readings will find it tedious, but I found it incredibly compelling. It establishes very quickly how different people are motivated/impacted by certain ideas, and it provides a lot of fun writing opportunities. The way he plays with words and phrases to mean different things at different times depending on which character and which perspective we're working within is the best part of the book. One sentence will have a million different meanings by the time you're done.

I was surprised by how emotionally invested I was in this series. I'm not a stranger to crying over books, but I seriously sobbed through almost the entire thing — it totals to over 1500 pages, so that's no small feat. To be fair, a lot of this is done with intentional sneaky writing tactics. Apparently, blatant foreshadowing and spoiling in regards to characters' deaths and tragedies is processed in my brain as threats. We're told for almost the whole story that one character is going to die by the end, and up until that character's last breathe, I was telling myself they were going to be fine. But while you're attention is being drawn in one direction, some other horrible thing would happen to knock you right off your feet.

When my friend asked me about these books, I told her, "They're books about a hockey town and all the terrible things that happen to the people who live here," which is not entirely inaccurate. Describing these books as a tragedy would be inaccurate, but they evoke the same emotions to be. Between the foreshadowing and the general vibes of Beartown itself, there is a sense of dread that sets in very quickly. Bad things are going to happen, and it's their nature that's making them happen, so there's nothing we can do to stop it.

It will be claimed that this happened to one person. It will be a lie.

We will say, “Things like this are no one’s fault,” but of course they are.

Deep down we will know the truth. It’s plenty of people’s fault.

Ours.

These characters are masterfully written. They have to be, given the nature of the book, but it's accomplished very well. There are plenty of characters to love and there are plenty hate, but you're depriving yourself if you see it so black and white. None of these characters are perfect, but they feel very real.

In my experience, when authors are trying to write very nuanced characters, they get lost in their story. The nuance used in these books is phenomenal. It's not enough to offer a character cheap excuses or a lazy redemption arc. We are introduced to characters who do evil things before their worst moments, which forces us to empathize with them at least a little bit. But Backman doesn't require us to give up our morals. Some things are wrong, full stop. But people are almost never just monsters, either. You can hold both truths within you without sacrificing them. In fact, I would argue it's the right thing to do. It's so easy to brush off one person's wrongdoing, but this series doesn't let you do that. You have to look deeper, or else it's just going to keep happening.

There is no singular villain of the series, or even of each book. Perhaps there's a main character at fault, but they're not a devil that needs to be eradicated. They're someone who has done something wrong and aught to face consequences, but there's something deeper in these towns. And I think it's written so perfectly.

It is often said that history is written by the winners, but there are no winners here.

I'm not a hockey fan. I live in Texas, so I've probably only even seen a rink once in my entire life. You don't have to like hockey to read these books, but you do have to buy in to the way Beartown and Hed care about hockey. Which can be difficult at times, but I'm familiar with how much some people care about football, so who am I to judge?

Backman proves a brilliant understanding of people and communities in this series. I don't live in a small town in Sweden, and my spot of Texas is arguable as different from Beartown as you can possibly get, but I know the people there. Part of it is the writing; Beartown is one of the main characters, and it's a very influential one. The isolation, the small town vibes, the trees, the politics, the noises. It was easy to feel grounded in Beartown.

Ultimately, Beartown is a concentrated example of the real world. There are a million Beartowns, and there are a million Beartown Hockey Clubs. This series doesn't read as if it's trying to make some grand statement about the world, but it's never just hockey, is it?

When I read a book that I love, I often find it difficult to write a review. How am I supposed to put into words the way this book made me feel? What could I possibly say to properly express the most brilliant parts of it? I can't, really, which is why I rarely write reviews for my 5 Star books. I wanted to try with Beartown, because I think it's an amazing work of art. It's an early recommendation, but as we're lingering in the cold for a bit here, consider checking out Beartown and all its heartbreak.