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353. Us Against You

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Fredrik Backman

Genre:  Fiction

448 pages, published June 5, 2018

Reading Format:  Audio Book

Summary

Us Against You is the sequel to Beartown, a book by Swedish author Frederik Backman that takes place in a small town in Sweden that lives and dies for youth hockey.  All the same characters from Beartown are back with new conflicts and drama and lots of hockey.

Quotes 

“Everyone is a hundred different things, but in other people’s eyes we usually get the chance to be only one of them.”

 

“He’s twelve years old, and this summer he learns that people will always choose a simple lie over a complicated truth, because the lie has one unbeatable advantage: the truth always has to stick to what actually happened, whereas the lie just has to be easy to believe.”

 

“The worst thing we know about other people is that we’re dependent upon them. That their actions affect our lives. Not just the people we choose, the people we like, but all the rest of them: the idiots. You who stand in front of us in every line, who can’t drive properly, who like bad television shows and talk too loud in restaurants and whose kids infect our kids with the winter vomiting bug at preschool. You who park badly and steal our jobs and vote for the wrong party. You also influence our lives, every second.”

 

“The complicated thing about good and bad people alike is that most of us can be both at the same time.”

 

“It’s so easy to get people to hate one another. That’s what makes love so impossible to understand. Hate is so simple that it always ought to win. It’s an uneven fight.”

 

“Sometimes people have to be allowed to have something to live for in order to survive everything else.”

 

“Life is a weird thing. We spend all our time trying to manage different aspects of it, yet we are still largely shaped by things that happen beyond our control.”

 

“They run only where there are lights. They don’t say anything but are both thinking the same thing: guys never think about light, it just isn’t a problem in their lives. When guys are scared of the dark, they’re scared of ghosts and monsters, but when girls are scared of the dark, they’re scared of guys.”

 

“Unfairness is a far more natural state in the world than fairness.”      

 

“Being a mother can be like drying out the foundations of a house or mending a roof: it takes time, sweat, and money, and once it’s done everything looks exactly the same as it did before. It’s not the sort of thing anyone gives you praise for.”

 

“The best friends of our childhoods are the loves of our lives, and they break our hearts in worse ways.”

 

“It’s hard to care about people. Exhausting, in fact, because empathy is a complicated thing. It requires us to accept that everyone else’s lives are also going on the whole time. We have no pause button for when everything gets too much for us to deal with, but then neither does anyone else.”

 

“What does it take to be a good parent? Not much. Just everything. Absolutely everything.”

 

“Anyone who devotes his life to being the best at one single thing will be asked, sooner or later, the same question: “Why?” Because if you want to become the best at something, you have to sacrifice everything else.”

 

“At some point almost everyone makes a choice. Some of us don’t even notice it happening, most don’t get to plan it in advance, but there’s always a moment when we take one path instead of another, which has consequences for the rest of our lives. It determines the people we will become, in other people’s eyes as well as our own. Elizabeth Zackell may have been right when she said that anyone who feels responsibility isn’t free. Because responsibility is a burden. Freedom is a pleasure.”

 

“Two drowning people with lead weights around their ankles may not be each other’s salvation; if they hold hands, they’ll just sink twice as fast. In the end the weight of carrying each other’s broken hearts becomes unbearable.”

 

“Sons want their fathers’ attention until the precise moment when fathers want their sons’.” 

My Take

While I’m a big fan of Fredrik Backman (A Man Called Ove, Beartown), I liked, but did not love Us Against You.  The characters, dialogue, ideas and conflicts are interesting at times, but it is re-plowing the same ground as Beartown, a superior book.

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272. Britt-Marie Was Here

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Fredrik Backman

Genre:  Fiction

324 pages, published May 3, 2016

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

When the story begins, Britt-Marie finds herself in a bad place.  Her husband Kent has left her and she must find a job and start over.  The unemployed office places her in charge of the Recreation Center in the just scraping by town of Borg.  Saddled with an obsessive-compulsive personality, Britt-Marie does what she always does:  clean and bring order to disorder.  Over time, her efforts extend to the kids of Borg, a motley lot who are crazy for football (soccer).

Quotes 

“One morning you wake up with more life behind you than in front of you, not being able to understand how it’s happened.”

 

“At a certain age almost all the questions a person asks him or herself are really just about one thing: how should you live your life?”

 

“You have to understand that when one is just standing there looking, then just for a second one is ready to jump. If one does it, one dares to do it. But if one waits, it’ll never happen.”

 

“It’s difficult to know when love blooms; suddenly one day you wake up and it’s in full flower. It works the same way when it wilts—one day it is just too late.”

 

“Because if we don’t forgive those we love, then what is left? What is love if it’s not loving our lovers even when they don’t deserve it?”

 

“An unreasonable amount of paperwork is required these days just to be a human being.”

 

“A human being may not choose her circumstances, but she does choose her actions.”

 

“A few years turned into more years, and more years turned into all years. Years have a habit of behaving like that.”

 

“The reason for her love of maps. It’s half worn away, the dot, and the red color is bleached. Yet it’s there, flung down there on the map halfway between the lower left corner and its center, and next to it is written, “You are here.”

 

“All marriages have their bad sides, because people have weaknesses. If you live with another human being you learn to handle these weaknesses in a variety of ways. For instance, you might take the view that weaknesses are a bit like heavy pieces of furniture, and based on this you must learn to clean around them. To maintain the illusion.”

 

“My mother worked for the social services all her life. She always said that in the middle of all the crap, in the thick of it all, you always had a sunny story turning up. Which makes it all worthwhile.’ The next words that come are smiling. ‘You’re my sunny story, Britt-Marie.”

 

Sometimes it’s easier to go on living, not even knowing who you are, when at least you know precisely where you are while you go on not knowing.”

 

“If you support Tottenham you always give more love than you get back… Tottenham is the worst kind of bad team, because they’re almost good. They always promise that they’re going to be fantastic. They make you hope. So you go on loving them and they carry on finding more and more innovative ways of disappointing you.”

 

“Human beings are the only animals that smile as a gesture of peace, whereas other animals show their teeth as a threat.”

 

“All passion is childish. It’s banal and naive. It’s nothing we learn; it’s instinctive, and so it overwhelms us. Overturns us. It bears us away in a flood. All other emotions belong to earth, but passion inhabits the universe.  That is the reason why passion is worth something, not for what it gives us but for what it demands we risk. Our dignity. The puzzlement of others and their condescending, shaking heads.”

 

“I was under the impression that one became a policeman because one believes in rules and regulations.” “I think Sven became a policeman because he believes in justice.”

 

“You love football because it is instinctive.If a ball comes rolling down the street you give it a punt. You love it for the same reason you fall in love. Because you don’t know how to avoid it.” 

My Take

While I enjoyed Britt-Marie Was Here, it is my least favorite of Fredrik Backman’s books that I have read.  Much better is A Man Called Ove and Beartown.  Nevertheless, Britt-Marie Was Here is worth a read.  Backman’s understanding of human nature and what makes us tick is present as is his ability to create a world that feels real and worth spending time in.

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250. And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:  Fredrik Backman

Genre:  Fiction, Short Stories, Novella

97 pages, published November 1, 2016

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

Bestselling author Fredrik Backman (A Man Called Ove and Bear Town) has written a moving, poignant short novella about the end of life transition faced by the elderly through the characters of Grandpa and his grandson Noah.

 

Quotes 

“Our teacher made us write a story about what we want to be when we’re big,” Noah tells him.

“What did you write?”

“I wrote that I wanted to concentrate on being little first.”

“That’s a very good answer.”

“Isn’t it? I would rather be old than a grown-up. All grown-ups are angry, it’s just children and old people who laugh.”

“Did you write that?”

“Yes.”

“What did your teacher say?”

“She said I hadn’t understood the task.”

“And what did you say?”

“I said she hadn’t understood my answer.”         

 

“Those who hasten to live are in a hurry to miss.”

 

“Isn’t that the best of all life’s ages, an old man thinks as he looks at his grandchild. When a boy is just big enough to know how the world works but still young enough to refuse to accept it.”

 

“You were a busy man, ” she whispers, regret filling every word because she knows she bears the same guilt.

“And now Ted is a busy man,” he says.

But the universe gave you both Noah. He’s the bridge between you. That’s why we get the chance to spoil our grandchildren, because by doing that we’re apologizing to our children.”

 

“Almost all grown adults walk around full of regret over a good-bye they wish they’d been able to go back and say better.”

 

“…this would be my greatest fear: imagination giving up before the body does. I guess I’m not alone in this. Humans are a strange breed in the way our fear of getting old seems to be even greater than our fear of dying.”

 

My Take

Having really enjoyed Fredrick Backman’s A Man Called Ove and Bear Town, I was looking forward to listening to the audio version of this short novella.  It did not disappoint.  Poignant, sweet, heartwarming, and sad.  It makes you think about how wonderful life is and how sad it will be say goodbye at the end.

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