~ Beartown/Us Against You, by Fredrik Backman ~
Beartown is a heartbreaking novel about cruelty and sports.
The eponymous town in this powerful novel by Fredrik Backman is a remote backwoods place with one focus: its ice hockey team. Boys play from early childhood, waking up before dawn to head out to practice, poorer parents scrimp and save to buy them equipment, the hockey players are kings of the town. There is even a semi-violent gang of supporters called the Pack.
Note that women are not mentioned here; there is no girls team, and girls are not even allowed to be serious spectators.
Girls were more than welcome to like sports in Beartown — just not the way that she did. Not that much. not to the point where she would lecture the boys about rules and tactics. Teenage girls were primarily supposed to be interested in hockey players, not hockey.
Beartown is set in Backman’s native Sweden, but there are distinct cultural similarities to Friday Night Lights, the book, movie and TV series about football in a small Texas town.
Xenophobia, homophobia, and misogyny are the three legs of hockey culture in Beartown. There is violence, hazing, and incessant cruelty both on the ice and off.
A torrent of punches rains down on the opposing player.
He shoves Zacharias hard with his shoulder as he walks past. “Nice beard, Zach. You look more like your mother every day!”.
Of course, aficionados (which in this case means practically everyone in Beartown) see it otherwise:
[Hockey] means everything. That’s all.
Everyone needs to realize that the good of the club comes before anything else.
For the players, too, it is completely central to their lives.
The attraction of the club and the sport is in the belonging.They weren’t old enough to know their multiplication tables, but they knew that a team didn’t mean anything if you couldn’t depend on each other. That’s both a big and a small thing. Knowing that there are people who will never abandon you.
Then, in the aftermath of an exciting victory, comes a sexual assault that divides the team, the town, the administration and the school. The vast majority immediately question the girl’s motives, her past, her behaviour, her clothing…the usual story.
And what a girl she is, this Maya. Emotionally and physically battered from the assault, abused by her erstwhile friends, her home attacked, her school locker graffiti’d… and she handles it better than most adults in the novel.
Backman has done a wonderful job of describing a large cast of characters. There is Amat, a refugee kid who is small but quick on the ice, and sees hockey as a way out of poverty so his mother need not clean floors to support them. Benji, handsome, sad-eyed, wild-hearted and fearless, with a secret. Kevin, the team star, with a hint of coldness in his eyes. Bobo, once a lead back who grew too large and slow to be on the first team. Peter Johanssen, Beartown’s first hockey success story who made it all the way to the NHL before coming home to manage. Kira, a lawyer who is married to Peter, and whose career always takes second place to everything else. The crazy-passionate hockey parents, the single-minded supporters, the woman who runs the bar. Each of them has a backstory, personality, and a life beyond the novel.
Backman’s style can be rather annoyingly ponderous at times, with every emotion explained and spelled out. Is this his writing style, or an attempt to reflect the original Swedish, or is it due to the translation? Hard to tell.
The novel tries to give you a feel for why the sport is so important to the players and fans, but the violence and cruelty are overwhelming; despite Backman’s attempts to tell all the stories, I could only empathize with one side.
Us Against You, the sequel to Beartown, came out in 2018. In the aftermath of the assault and its consequences, the town has split; some of the team stars have moved over to their rival team, Hed. Maya is struggling to recover, her parents are shaken, her little brother Leo is growing up furious and vengeful.
Beartown was powerful and moving. This sequel seems simultaneously like more of the same, and too much. The style remains unchanged.
Have you ever seen a town fall? Ours did.
Have you ever seen a town rise? Ours did that, too.
As with Beartown, the novel has a large cast of characters, with a few pages following each of them for a short period of time. Many of these sections end with ominous cliffhangers:
Ana doesn’t take her rifle. It’s a decision she’ll regret.
When Peter gets into his car and drives off, the stranger follows him.
It’s hard to blame her for what is about to happen. But also very easy.
What happens to Ana or Peter generally turns out to be considerably less grim than these foreboding sentences would suggest. It seemed like an obvious and rather strained attempt to emotionally manipulate the reader, as if the author was not confident enough that the plot would hold their attention.
The plot of Us Against You is interesting, though. In a town where life is framed by male violence, a female hockey coach appears, and a gay player is forced out of the closet, thus putting the town and team homophobia and misogyny to the test. There are some unexpected responses by unexpected characters, and this is a novel of redemption and creeping social change.
Unfortunately, the political and financial machinations required to sustain the club are the focus of significant sections of the novel. The politicians and investors are never as interesting as the teenage hockey players, and the novel loses steam in those sections.
Most readers who read Beartown will want to read Us Against You, just to know how things turn out, but the first novel is the stronger of the two.
Beartown, by Fredrik Backman. Atria, 2017
Us Against You, by Fredrik Backman. Atria, 2018.
Read with tremendous interest your review of the two Backman books, and realised just how differently someone else could have received/read them from how I did!
Your first sentence read that it is a heartbreaking novel – agree wholly – but I don’t agree it is about sport and cruelty. I think the novels -both – were about loyalty and love. That’s why I was so engaged completely. Cruelty and sport would never have grasped me like that, I suspect.
I thought Maya was wonderful too – but I thought all the women characters were tremendous – matured, strong, giving…Maya’s mum is amazing, Ana is amazing, the mum of that young Asian star player – I am terrible with names) is amazing…I think Backman depicted misogyny, but himself is obviously anything but…. and what’s that fellow’s name who gets caught up in all fights – his sisters are all such powerful women! I saw every woman in this novel written up as a powerhouse! In fact, my gripe with Backman is that his thesis almost seems to be saying to generate such strong women, they need to be oppressed by misogyny! (laugh!)
I loved his writing style. It was so reflective, there was such an internal plus external element in beautiful harmony. His style is what I read the books for, even more than his plotline. I love the way he delivers – some of his lines are knock out punches. His consciousness flows in such a non-English way, that it thrills me to enter into the mental processing of such a different mindset. He is such a gifted author!
And for all you know I am no sports jock, I totally found myself drawn into those town affiliations, those ice hockey madnesses – that’s testimony to the power of his writing that he made me care about something I actually have zero interest in! (chuckle!)
His depictions and pace are all good, but supreme of course is his cast of characters, as you also said. He has an amazing touch with sketching relationships. Light hand, very quick clever strokes.
I was completely in his world – of darkness, and ice, and casual violence, and rough edges, abrasive, bruising, and yet so loyal, so felt, so bonded. I think I relished most of all how his novels are all about the loves between people, the different textures, qualities, motives, strengths of the many loves he drew. It was a love story for me – not a romance story, but a love story. People love hard, here.
Ah well, my tuppence worth. Sometimes, one falls in love with books/styles and then one becomes less rational perhaps, like any love is! (Laugh!)
Loyalty, yes, and often misplaced, in my opinion :-).
What I should have mentioned in the review is ‘courage’. That’s what stands out to me, in hindsight — the courage of Maya and Ana, of Benji, of Amat, of his mother Fatima, of Bobo. In a town where there is one socially sanctioned way to think, they consciously chose to be different, to stand out, and to take the consequences.
Lisa, I’m probably more of a sports jock than you are — I follow a few sports and players and love watching them. But the sheer wastefulness of all that violence! All the physical injuries, all the children emotionally scarred, all the talent wasted because of the bullies!
I think the story of the talented 4-year-old girl who was physically abused by her family was meant to be an uplifting coda. I found it very sad, though. What if this 4-year-old had not happened to be very good at hockey, would anyone have cared about her abuse?
The fact that I feel so strongly about the characters indicates that I was drawn into the book too.
p.s. agree with you that Backman himself is not misogynistic, in fact he writes about the constant misogyny in the town and team very pointedly. Also liked Benji’s tough sisters.
yes, you are right, these books are all about courage! Physical courage and emotional courage. And the courage to be hurt, and carry the pain.
What if the abused 4 year old had no sports talent? Then she becomes like the many abused 4 year olds everywhere else, traumatised and scarred, victim of brutalisation. This 4 year old may find redemption through her talent, but the vast majority will not. I like Backman for his unblinkingly bleak take on what is pretty stark, in reality. The lack of sugar coating and rawness is what appeals in his books. Particularly told in that deliberate way of his – his writing voice is wonderfully distinctive. Have read all his books, and so enjoyed that writing voice.
yes, Benji’s tough sisters, those were the ones I meant. Also, liked the friendship between Ana and Maya.
Was the loyalty misguided? I never thought of it that way, but maybe you are right. Maybe that’s what gives these novels such a poignant edge – that understated tragedy to it all. I suppose it is almost Shakespearian, the notion of one vanquishing oneself.