Wow, what a book!
I just recently found Fredrick Blackman, having a friend offer me A Man Named Ove to me back in November of last year. It was a book that took me a minute to get into, but really picked up and I wasn’t able to put it down.
My sister, unbeknownst to her that I was reading A Man Named Ove, gave me Backman’s follow up novel My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She’s Sorry.
Ove follows an old man trying to cope with loss and how he fits in the world after that loss. While reading it, it reminded me of pixars Up but without the whimsy and cartoonish physics of that world. The entire read felt like reading a Pixar style movie. Backman created such vivid characters that really make you feel for them and want to know what they will do next.
Backman continues the theme of loss with My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry. Backman once again creates a world that makes you really feel for the characters and wonder what will happen next. How will these characters deal with the loss that has been put in front of them? Is usually the driving question.
But he changes things up in Beartown. Instead of crafting a couple of major characters, Backman creates a vivid town full of unique and unforgettable characters. Instead of wondering what will happen to the main character, there are no real main characters in Beartown. The entire cast is given development and feeling.
But I’m getting ahead of myself here… Let me backtrack…
Beartown is about a small town that could be anywhere in the world. The town had made its claim to fame through hockey, but has struggled through a draught of players for a while. This affects the entire town, since businesses have moved out and Beartown has been whittled down to next to nothing. But now, thanks to the talents and work of the Junior team and its leaders, Beartown is on the upswing.
The story follows everyone in the town, from the General Manager of the Hockey club, to the janitor of the club, to the town drunk, the kids on the team, and even a teacher at a school. Every single one of the characters is vivid and alive. They all have strengths and faults. You will care for just about each and every one of them. I even had tremendous sympathy for the “villain” of the novel. All the choices that the characters make seem rooted in real life, and they make choices that you can see yourself or your friends making. This is the strength of Backman’s work.
While hockey is the backbone of the novel, you don’t need to know anything about it to follow along really. Maybe having a basic knowledge of the sport will help you enjoy the few passages that involved the sport, but that’s about it. It shouldn’t detract from the enjoyment of the read. In fact, the real action happens off the ice anyway.
That said, it can show how much a town can be centered around a certain sport. Hockey could really be any sport and town that is centered around the sport. It reminded me of some of the smaller communities in Texas I have been a part of that rallied around the football field every Friday night.
The reading itself is easy. The translator of the book helps craft the language into easy to read but still deep prose. While I’m sure some of the writing has been changed because of the translation, I don’t know that anything was missing from the story. The dialogue is crisp, and descriptions are fantastic. The pacing of the story is solid as well. Backman uses an easy and light style with lots of breaks and shifts in characters. These breaks helped draw me in to read when I only had a quick second or so. It also makes the book fly by.
Do yourself a favor and pick up this book, as well as the rest of his books. Backman has become one of my favorite authors, up there with Rowling, Lehane, and King. Once again, if my review helped you, please consider using one of my links to help me fund the page! Every little bit helps right now.
