There is already a book in 2018 that I am looking forward to.After reading Beartown by Fredrik Backman last month, I immediately requested its sequel Us Against You from the library. Oh and did I tell you, the Beartown has a sequel.
But, after two Fredrik Backman books this year, I am convinced I will be reading more of them next year. And yet, I found Beartown endearing because it appeals to our basic needs of cheering for a win, and our human tendency to fear loss. It is a different genre from A Man Called Ove, so there is no point comparing the two. It is still quite dramatic, clichéd and “high-on-emotion”, which could be a negative for some, but I am more than okay with that when it comes to fiction.
Mercifully, the author is not on a Redemption Tour and he doesn’t go out of the way to make saints out of everyone. I was so distracted by the characters’ reactions to the crisis, waiting to see if they make the right choice, waiting to judge them for their choices that I forgot to worry about the match. The author sets up the story in a way that every chapter makes you feel that something dark is going to happen, and the creepy feeling intensifies every few pages. Not necessarily a superhero quality, but a redeeming one for sure. I am impressed by the fact that even the minor characters have a backstory, and more importantly a redeeming quality. I am not really into sports, but frankly, after a while, it wasn’t so much about ice hockey as it was about human psychology. I won’t deny that at the crux of it, it is still a “underdogs trump the favourites”, but it is the way the story builds up that warmed my heart. The first half led me into thinking that this is a typical, jingoistic, sports-themed story but the second half makes up for it. But strangely I like the chaos it creates. There are enough characters in the story to give me carpal tunnel syndrome if I type them down. You have to take a side, and either of the choices makes you uneasy.
That is when a violent act sends ripples through the community and leaving every soul of Beartown disoriented and shell-shocked. Think of all the clichés in storytelling – underdogs, teenage love, hero worship, a blinding frenzy for a sport the kind that makes you turn a blind eye to every evil, a community that close-knit and scattered in equal measure, poverty that drives one to succeed at all costs, adolescents who find themselves lost and come out of a disaster with a fresh sense of direction – Beartown has everything! A lot depends on the outcome of an ice hockey final, and everybody is jittery and nervous. Beartown is a small, nondescript town, populated by people who love ice hockey, and cling to it even more after realising that it is the only thing that might turn over a new leaf for the community’s economy.
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