Book ReviewBeartown by Fredrik Backman [CC]

Hey What's up, you guys? It's Connor, and today I'm going to be doing a book review on Beartown by Fredrik Backman. If you don't know, Fredrik Backman is one of my favorite authors, and I have read all of the books and novella that he has that have been translated into English. I've also done book reviews on all of them, and I'll leave those in the card symbol as well as in a playlist in the description. You can check them out if you want to, but today we're talking about Beartown.

I requested and was sent this book from the publisher in order to read it and review it for you guys because I. Was so excited that is coming out. But that in no way affects my basically love for this book. Beartown really follows just this small Swedish town that is surrounded by forests.

It is a town that has been degrading and going downhill for a while now. A lot of people have lost their jobs. People are moving away from this town, and not many people are moving there. And I think one of the lines in the book is that "if a town is not growing, it's actually dying", and that's what Beartown is.

It is slowly dying. This town is really centered around hockey, and you don't have to really like hockey to really love this book or appreciate the things that talks about even when it's talking about hockey. You can easily substitute any other type of physical activity or hobby that a small town would collect around so possibly football in America or soccer in pretty much every other country. You know what? I'm just going to read the back of this book because that is going to give you a better description than what I'm trying to do right now.

It's been a long time since the residents of Beartown have felt like winners. That could change this year if the teenage boys who make up the junior ice hockey team can win the national championship.They have the heads, the hands, and hearts to do it, but it's what happens off the ice that will change this town forever... Dun Dun Dun!  And because it really follows a town, you follow a lot of different characters. I think you follow 10-or-something people closely, and there are some other people that are just around the fringes.

But don't let that daunt you. It's not very overwhelming or anything like that. You're definitely going to know who people are, and how they're related to each other, and everything like that. As usual with my book reviews, I'm gonna go through my pros, go through my cons, give you my rating; then be done.

My first pro is just going to be that I love Fredrik Backman's writing. He is such a good writer. He uses literary devices and elements so well. I.

Was just astounded. I think that something that he uses particularly well in this novel is the use of repetition. I get annoyed when books are very repetitive, but this book uses repetition perfectly. So the first line of chapter two - chapter one is just this one little thing here - it says "Bang.

Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang." That little "Bang.

Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang." Is repeated throughout the novel, but it's used with different people and used to represent different things.

I just love that, and he does that with some other things as well. Oone chapter it says marriage is complicated at the very beginning or something along those lines, and then in the chapter that certain things happen. And then at the end it's like, "A marriage is complicated.", And it gives such a heavy weight to those words. I just - I don't know how he did it.

They also use things like, "Again and Again and Again" Every time that it pops up even though it's it's the same sentence, where it shows up in the story means different things. And I just loved how the different repetitions, and the things that he brought back into the story, and the same sentences that he said over and over again always meant something a little bit different, and it meant something different for each character that they showed up alongside. So just wow! There are so many examples of the repetition this book that I. Absolutely loved and found to just be fantastic that I wrote down a bunch of them.

But I just decided that I am not going to spoil you, so uh yeah just look for to that for yourself. Another pro for this book is the hockey element. I don't love hockey. I don't really know how to play hockey.

I don't know all the rules, but the way that hockey plays a role in this story is so relatable to pretty much every small town around. I'm from a small town, and my town really comes around football which is a lot of towns in America. The weight that's put on to the players of football in high school or to the players of hockey in this book is insanely high, but it's so realistic that these parents and this community have put so much weight on the shoulders of 17 year olds. I like how real that was and how I just I know that happens in real life.

They think that if this hockey team does really well, then it'll bring all of these other people towards their town and help their town start to grow again. That's a crazy amount of pressure to put on a seventeen-year-old. Another thing I. Loved was the characters.

They're so real, and although you don't like all the characters because how could you just with what's going on in here. But I just thought that all the characters were so well done, so real, so fleshed out. I really liked how he did his characters too. At the very beginning you're given a surface layer of each character, and I think at first you really dislike every single character.

I think except for Amat. He's, like, the only one that you don't dislike. Him and his mom, Fatima, but  for everyone else you're like, "Dang! They are so annoying! Why would I even care about this person?" And then as the story goes along it just digs a slight bit deeper, and then a little bit deeper, and then a little bit deeper, and you find yourself understanding each character. Although you don't love all of them, you definitely understand where they're coming from.

And I don't know at what point I became so invested in every single character, and I think that was so well done because I just didn't even realize it was happening until after it was done and I was really invested. The characterization was incredibly well done. No one was just completely morally correct. They all have rough times.

They all fall down, and it's the ones that really work hard to be good people that end up being, like, better people, I guess, than the other ones. But no one in this book is perfect, and i love that. There's a huge theme of competition in this book. Competition with others but also competition with yourself, and I think that the competition with yourself was the one that was much more important in this book.

And I think that's a thing just about life - that you have to realize that being competitive with yourself is a lose-lose situation because if you're trying to weigh two different parts of your life, then one of them is going to lose and one of them is going to win. But it's still you, so you lose. For instance one of the characters is having to deal with the fact that she wants to be a career woman and how the town really thinks that being a career woman is basically a bad thing because she also have to balance being a mom. She is competing with herself being a mom and being a career woman, and how does that work, and who wins in the end if you're trying to be the best mom but you're also trying to be the best career woman.

There's got to be a balance, but she's trying to compete. And it just doesn't work. And I really like that throughout this novel there are tons of characters that are having to go through the same thing of "Well there's this one side of me, and there's another side of me. Which one is the one that will come out on top kind of thing." As well as external [competition].

So the hockey team having to be the other hockey team.It's just all very competitive. As well as being competitive, there are also a lot of parallels that are made. Like, certain characters will be put alongside another character, and you can see how their paths diverge and what could possibly happen to a person if this happened versus that happening. I don't want to go into too much detail because I don't want to spoil anything, again, but I just love seeing how two people can be in the same position, but because this accident or this thing happened at this one point in time, their future is completely different because of it.

I feel like I'm a little bit all over the place with this review. That's because I'm gushing really. It's just a gush basically. Another thing that I love about this book is that it just is beautiful.

It's just a beautiful book, and the reason why I think that it's a beautiful book is that it has a lot of just simple truths and they don't try to make them more complicated than they have to be. If you're describing a flower, you can just call it a flower. You don't have to say that it's a combination of stamens, and anthers, and pedals, and sepals, and ovaries, and whatever. You can just call it a flower, and that's what this book kind of does.

He has a very simple way of getting the point across, but if you are invested when you're reading it, you get so much more out of it. I love that. It's very easy to tell if something is good or evil, but even still with those lines drawn, life is still complicated. This book has a bit of a darker tone than any of his other books.

I mean, I. Know A Man Called Ove is about a guy who's trying to kill himself, but in this I feel like Ove is really trying to find a reason to live now that his wife has passed away. In this one it's more of a dark feeling. A lot of people in this book seems isolated, and so it's a bit darker.

Just know that going in. I really enjoyed it. I really liked the change in tone, and I really liked how it was done it this northern town that doesn't have a whole lot of sunlight throughout all of the year. It fits the story, and it fit the characters.

Just know going in that this book is also going to have some triggers as well. One of which is that there's a lot of teasing and bullying, so if that's going to affect you in a negative way. It doesn't depict those things as good, but there are some instances where there are teasing and bullying and what's called locker-room talk where there are crass jokes about homosexuality or women or other groups of people. Those are in there, and they're not depicted as being right.

But it's realistic because that does happen in locker rooms, and I liked how it was handled in this. But if thats going to trigger you, then just know that is going on in here. Some of the kids in this are really picked on at school, and a lot of parents are okay with it. There's definitely some commentary on that being a bad thing, and locker-room talk is stupid, and making crude and disgusting comments about women is dumb and shouldn't be done.

But they are in here. The main thing that affects this town can also be triggering, but I don't want to spoil it because I think at the beginning of the book - for the first half or so - you're like, "Oh shoot! What's gonna happen?" You're trying to figure out who's going to do the bad thing; What is going to actually happen. You know, you're you're trying to figure it out, and the tension in the beginning of the book is just building and building and building to that point. So I don't want to give away that point to people that are not triggered by things, but after I'm done talking about the book, I will tell you what the event is that really affects this town so that you can know going in what it is or if it's going to trigger you or not so you can avoid the book is if it is going to.

So stay tuned to the end if you have triggers. Another thing I like about Fredrik Backman's books is that he always does two different timelines - usually in his books. For instance, in My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry there's the timeline of the main character who's an eight-year-old girl as a younger girl and then the current time period. A Man Called Ove follows Ove in the current time as well as Ove in the past.

In this book he did something a little bit different. There's the current time period, but then there's also the future. And so in the book it'll be like, "She will never forget this for the rest of her life", and so you know this specific thing will be affecting her in the future even if it doesn't right now. Ten years in the future is really what this book goes for, so it will say, "In ten years he will look back on this memory and think 'this'", so I liked seeing the future come back into the present and explain why the present is so important to these people, and to this town, and in general.

I think that the future being the other timeline that he follows really adds to the tension and the building of this novel until the big event happens because you're like, "Oh shoot! This character is being affected this way in 10 years. Why? And what's going to happen in this timeline?" So yeah really like the two timeline things the future and the present. I also like that Fredrik Backman's books are diverse. One of the main characters that you follow is gay, so you follow him as he is trying to come to terms with that and what that means for him and for his future.

As well as it follows a boy named Amat who is living with his single mother, and they're refugees from war that is happening. So the people of color in this very white environment, and you see the exploration of them being of color and how that affects their life being in Beartown and everything like that. So yeah, I really like the diversity and exploration of what it means to be someone different, someone other in a town where everyone is the same. There are so many more things that I loved about this book, but I honestly just don't have time to talk about it.

I feel like I've already talked your ear off enough about all the things that I love about this book. I don't have any cons, so I can't go through any of those because I literally love this book so much. I've already pre-ordered the book. I got it from Barnes & Noble because they have signed editions of it, so i wanted to get a signed edition.

I gave it five stars obviously. I think it is incredible. I. Really recommend you pre-ordering it, or getting it from the library, or just somehow getting your hands on this story.

It is that good. I honestly don't even know if its review made any sense, but if you liked it, please give it a big thumbs up and comment down below if you're planning on reading Beartown. Have you read any of Fredrik Backman's other books? Are you interested now? Or if you want to talk to you about this book you can message me on Twitter or message me on Goodreads. I.

Just want to talk about it. Anything else you want me to know, leave it down below, and I will talk to you guys next time. Bye! So if you don't want to hear what the big event is that happens in this book, the event that happens off the ice that will change the town forever, click off. The only reason why I'm saying it right now is because some people have triggers and really would like to know what it is that is bad that happens.

And so the big event that happens is that one of the characters is raped, and it goes into a decent amount of detail about what happens during that situation. And obviously in this book it's not portrayed as a good thing, but it's portrayed in a realistic way. And how people respond to someone being raped in a small town is very realistic ,so all those things might be triggering to people that are triggered by rape. So I.

Just wanted to put that out there, and let people know if that is going to affect their reading experience or not. Again I definitely recommend this book! Please, please check it out!.