Release date: April 25th, 2017
Series: Beartown #1
Pages: 432
Genre: Fiction
People say Beartown is finished. A tiny community nestled deep in the forest, it is slowly losing ground to the ever encroaching trees. But down by the lake stands an old ice rink, built generations ago by the working men who founded this town. And in that ice rink is the reason people in Beartown believe tomorrow will be better than today. Their junior ice hockey team is about to compete in the national semi-finals, and they actually have a shot at winning. All the hopes and dreams of this place now rest on the shoulders of a handful of teenage boys.
Being responsible for the hopes of an entire town is a heavy burden, and the semi-final match is the catalyst for a violent act that will leave a young girl traumatized and a town in turmoil. Accusations are made and, like ripples on a pond, they travel through all of Beartown, leaving no resident unaffected.
Beartown explores the hopes that bring a small community together, the secrets that tear it apart, and the courage it takes for an individual to go against the grain. In this story of a small forest town, Fredrik Backman has found the entire world.
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“And when enough people are quiet for long enough, a handful of voices can give the impression that everyone is screaming.”
I admit I started reading this book with a lot of scepticism. I didn't think a story about a small hockey-obsessed town will be to my liking, but this book turned out to be so much more.
This is a book about a small town hiding big secrets. About people who are always together as one, everyone friends with everyone, everyone knowing everyone. Until something happens where people have to pick a side. They have to decide which side to pick: truth or lie, wrong or right.
It is a book about how easier it is to turn your head away when it comes to a cruel truth, about how easier it is to keep telling yourself that this can't happen. Not to her. Not to him.
One of them is lying, one is telling the truth. One is popular and has powerful, rich parents, the other one doesn't have enough proof, no witnesses and an ulterior motive to destroy the other one. Allegedly. A word against a word. Thousand reasons for a lie, too little for the truth.
“Big secrets turn us into small men.”
This book positively surprised me. An amazing story, written in a beautiful way; about the things that are happening all around us, about the people who rather keep quiet because they're scared and about the people who have enough power to sweep everything under the rug.
And the ending ... It makes me want to immediately pick the second book up, but I'm also scared and if you've read the book (or will read it), you'll know exactly what I'm talking about.
“... but perhaps you get tired of being frightened if you've been frightened long enough.”
Fredrik Backman is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (soon to be a major motion picture starring Tom Hanks), My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry, Britt-Marie Was Here, Beartown, Us Against You, as well as two novellas, And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer and The Deal of a Lifetime. Things My Son Needs to Know About the World, his first work of non-fiction, will be released in the US in May 2019. His books are published in more than forty countries. He lives in Stockholm, Sweden, with his wife and two children. Connect with him on Twitter @BackmanLand or on Instagram @backmansk.
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