Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:  Frederik Backman

Genre:  Fiction

432 pages, published September, 2016

Reading Format:  Audio Book

Summary

Beartown is the name of a small town in Sweden (although it could be anywhere with cold weather that is surrounded by forest) that has seen better days.  The one thing Beartown has going for it is hockey.  The sport is beloved by all, young and old, and the teenage hockey team, especially the very talented Kevin, are treated like Gods by the townspeople.  When Kevin is accused of rape by the manager’s daughter, the town rallies to his defense with a few notable exceptions.  As the case and hockey finals progress, no resident of Beartown is left unaffected.

Quotes 

“Hate can be a deeply stimulating emotion. The world becomes easier to understand and much less terrifying if you divide everything and everyone into friends and enemies, we and they, good and evil. The easiest way to unite a group isn’t through love, because love is hard, It makes demands. Hate is simple. So the first thing that happens in a conflict is that we choose a side, because that’s easier than trying to hold two thoughts in our heads at the same time. The second thing that happens is that we seek out facts that confirm what we want to believe – comforting facts, ones that permit life to go on as normal. The third is that we dehumanize our enemy.”

 

“Everyone has a thousand wishes before a tragedy, but just one afterward.”

 

“All adults have days when we feel completely drained. When we no longer know quite what we spend so much time fighting for, when reality and everyday worries overwhelm us and we wonder how much longer we’re going to be able to carry on. The wonderful thing is that we can all live through far more days like that without breaking than we think. The terrible thing is that we never know exactly how many.”

 

“You never have the sort of friends you have when you’re fifteen ever again. Even if you keep them for the rest of your life, it’s never the same as it was then.”

 

“If you are honest, people may deceive you. Be honest anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfishness. Be kind anyway. All the good you do today will be forgotten by others tomorrow. Do good anyway.”

 

“There are few words that are harder to explain than “loyalty.” It’s always regarded as a positive characteristic, because a lot of people would say that many of the best things people do for each other occur precisely because of loyalty. The only problem is that many of the very worst things we do to each other occur because of the same thing.”

 

“A simple truth, repeated as often as it is ignored, is that if you tell a child it can do absolutely anything, or that it can’t do anything at all, you will in all likelihood be proven right.”

 

“What an uncomfortable, terrible source of shame it is for the world that the victim is so often the one left with the most empathy for others.”

 

“She’s fifteen, above the age of consent, and he’s seventeen, but he’s still “the boy” in every conversation. She’s “the young woman”.

 

“The love a parent feels for a child is strange. There is a starting point to our love for everyone else, but not this person. This one we have always loved, we loved them before they even existed. No matter how well prepared they are, all moms and dads experience a moment of total shock, when the tidal wave of feelings first washed through them, knocking them off their feet. It’s incomprehensible because there’s nothing to compare it to. It’s like trying to describe sand between your toes or snowflakes on your tongue to someone who’s lived their whole life in a dark room. It sends the soul flying.”

 

“Bitterness can be corrosive. It can rewrite your memories as if it were scrubbing a crime scene clean, until in the end you only remember what suits you of its causes.”

 

“But sometimes that’s what it takes, a culture of silence to foster a culture of winning.”

 

“Some people say hockey is like religion, but that’s wrong. Hockey is like faith. Religion is something between you and other people; it’s full of interpretations and theories and opinions. But faith…that’s just between you and God. It’s what you feel in your chest when the referee glides out to the center circle between two players, when you hear the sticks strike each other and see the black disk fall between them. Then it’s just between you and hockey.”

 

“Humanity has many shortcomings, but none is stronger than pride.”

 

“Ignore everything else, just concentrate on the things you can change.”

 

“If you spend your whole life being someone else, who will be you?”

 

“Some of you were born with talent, some weren’t. Some of you are lucky and got everything for free, some of you got nothing. But remember, when you’re out on the ice you’re all equals. And there’s one thing you need to know: desire always beats luck.”

 

“You never stop being scared of falling from the top, because when you close your eyes you can still feel the pain from each and every step of the way up.” 

 

“Another morning comes. It always does. Time always moves at the same rate, only feelings have different speeds. Every day can mark a whole lifetime or a single heartbeat, depending on who you spend it with. ”

 

“The only thing the sport gives us are moments. But what the hell is life, Peter, apart from moments?”

 

“We love winners, even though they’re very rarely particularly likeable people. They’re almost always obsessive and selfish and inconsiderate. That doesn’t matter. We forgive them. We like them while they’re winning.”

 

“On the one hand, our entire species survived because we stuck together and cooperated, but on the other hand we developed because the strongest individuals always thrived at the expense of the weak. So we always end up arguing about where the boundaries should be drawn. How selfish are we allowed to be? How much are we obliged to care about each other?”

 

“What you create, others can destroy. Create anyway. Because in the end, it is between you and God. It was never between you and anyone else anyway.”

 

“One of the plainest truths about both towns and individuals is that they usually don’t turn into what we tell them to be, but what they are told they are.”

 

“There are two things that are particularly good at reminding us how old we are: children and sports.”

 

“There’s a label she used to love but which she loathes when it’s pronounced in a Beartown accent: “career woman.” Peter’s friends call her that, some in admiration and some with distaste, but no one calls Peter a “career man.” It strikes a nerve because Kira recognizes that insinuation: you have a “job” so you can provide for your family, whereas a “career” is selfish. You have one of those for your own sake.”

 

“The very worst events in life have that effect on a family: we always remember, more sharply than anything else, the last happy moments before everything fell apart.”

 

“David drives back to Björnstad. Sits in the car and cries in anger. He is ashamed. He is disgusted. With himself. For an entire hockey life he has trained a boy, loved him like a son, been loved back as a father. There is no player as loyal as Benji. No bigger heart than his. How many times has David hugged number sixteen after a game and told him that? “You are the bravest bastard I know, Benji.” The bravest bastard I know. ” And after all those hours in locker rooms, all those nights in the bus, all the conversations and blood, sweat and tears, the boy didn’t dare tell his coach his greatest secret. It’s a betrayal, David knows it’s a terrible betrayal. There is no other way to explain how much a grown man must have failed for such a warrior of a boy to make him think his coach would be less proud of him if he was gay. David hates himself for not being better than his father. For that is a son’s job.”

 

“Not a second has passed since she had children without her feeling like a bad mother. For everything. For not understanding, for being impatient, for not knowing everything, not making better packed lunches, for still wanting more out of life than just being a mother.”

My Take

Having previously read (and really enjoyed) A Man Called Ove, I was looking forward to another book by Swedish author Frederik Backman.  I was not disappointed by Beartown.  Backman captures the determination, angst, sense of inferiority and pathos of growing up in a small town that isn’t quite making it.  He also shows how the sport of hockey is an all consuming religion for many players.  I’ve seen a bit of this from friends whose kids are hockey players.  A compelling, easy reading book with well drawn characters and an engaging plot that I wholeheartedly recommend.