This remote small town in a forest is still reeling from scandal ... It’s an emotional roller coaster of a ride with surprising twists and turns as the intense rivalry between Beartown and Hed escalates from pranks to serious violence, leaving both communities stunned by what they’ve become. What you get in a Fredrik Backman work is wonderful writing and brilliant insights into things that truly matter — right vs. wrong, fear vs. courage, love vs. hate, the importance and limits of friendship and loyalty, and more.
If Alexander McCall Smith’s and Maeve Binchy’s novels had a love child, the result would be the work of Swedish writer Fredrik Backman. His new book, Us Against You continues the saga of a small place that readers fell in love with in Beartown (2017) ... If you have no interest in hockey, you might assume you’ll have no interest in this novel. You would be wrong.
As Us Against You opens, Beartown’s future is threatened: first by the possible closure of its only factory, and second by the bankruptcy faced by the town’s hockey club. Hockey isn’t merely a game to the town’s inhabitants—their whole lives revolve around the Bears’ wins and losses. Backman’s latest saga focuses on the first hockey season following the schism, brilliantly portraying the way each magnetic character copes with the hatred and violence that has engulfed these two small towns as their teams prepare to do battle ... Backman stirs this volatile mélange of disparate characters until the inevitable explosion occurs, leaving Beartown sadder but perhaps wiser than before ... His depiction of this small town will resonate especially with readers who struggle with the racism, homophobia and misogyny that exist in their own communities.
Sure, many of Beartown’s residents are bigots and bullies. But some are generous and selfless. Actually, the bigots and bullies are also generous and selfless, in certain circumstances. And Lord knows they’ve all had a rough time of it. The important thing to remember is that hockey is pure. Except when it inspires violence. This is an interesting tactic for a novel in our cultural moment of sensitivity, and it can feel cumbersome. Backman uses...elegance to slyly misdirect his readers. Sometimes he overreaches and words that sound pretty together don’t hold up to scrutiny ... Grim in tone, it features an overstocked cast of characters, all of whom are struggling for self-definition. Backman plays the story for both cynicism and hope, and his skill makes both hard, but not impossible, to resist.
...hockey-obsessed village...rocked after a junior team member was convicted of rape the previous spring, and the hockey club is in danger of being liquidated. As tension between Beartown and its rival town, Hed, comes to a boiling point over hockey, jobs, and political squabbles, each member of the community confronts the same questions: 'what would you do for your family? What wouldn’t you do?' Narrated by a collective 'we,' Backman’s novel has an atmosphere of both Scandinavian folktale and Greek tragedy ... Darkness and grit exist alongside tenderness and levity, creating a blunt realism that brings the setting’s small-town atmosphere to vivid life.
