#1 Best Seller in Sports Fiction
My participation with The Y Book Club for July was Beartown by Backman. Yes, I listened to this audiobook back in 2022 before quickly discovering that it’s sports fiction, definitely not one of my usual genres. Reloading an ebook so I could refresh my memory of it for the club meeting, I discovered new depths to the narrative I’d missed in skimming the sports dialogue.
Book Blurb:
By the lake in Beartown is an old ice rink, and in that ice rink Kevin, Amat, Benji, and the rest of the town’s junior ice hockey team are 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.
Under that heavy burden, the match becomes 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.
This is a story about a town and a game, but even more about loyalty, commitment, and the responsibilities of friendship; the people we disappoint even though we love them; and the decisions we make every day that come to define us. In this story of a small forest town, Fredrik Backman has found the entire world.
Beartown was my first experience with a Backman novel and my problem was in having the patience sufficient to get through the heavily weighted ice hockey game descriptions; game strategy, players, coaches, parents, rivalry, and ethics to get to the crux of the novel.
Of course, I loved that it is located in a tiny community in a deeply forested area of Sweden. It is the crushing isolation and the economic loss killing the little town that seems to force the only claim to fame it possesses—a winning junior ice hockey team. Some of these kids are so good they are recruited to professional hockey. Too much weight on the shoulders of teenagers, however, builds the tension that eventually threatens to bury the last of their hopes.
The moderator led us into several spirited discussions and nuances I’d missed on my own. When I read it earlier, I thought it was an emotional look at parenting, teenage angst, friendships, and disloyalty. I could understand the decisions made while at the same time railed at the loss it reflected.
Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with the opportunity to read and review this book. The thoughts expressed here are my own.
Spirited discussion on many of the book club’s point discussions. Most were shocked at the turn of events to the tragic circumstances about half-way into the book and then further shocked at the sharp division of opinion or sentiments about the incident. Of course, that was the driving emotion triggering frustration at the lack of options. Hidden behind the division of he said/she said was the obvious impact of how any remedy could possibly affect the entire future of the little town. No equitable solution in sight.
As possibly expected, the group hit the same wall as the author expected his readers would. Was there ever to be an equitable solution? Must it always be the sacrifice of one or a few for the good of the many?
Book Details:
Genre: Sports Fiction, Small Town & Rural Fiction
Publisher: Atria Books
ISBN: 978-1501160783
ASIN: B01KG5GQDS
Print Length: 430 pages
Publication Date: April 25, 2017
Source: Local Library
Title Link(s):
Amazon-US | Amazon-UK | Barnes & Noble | Kobo
The Author: Fredrik Backman is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Man Called Ove, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry, Britt-Marie Was Here, Beartown, Us Against You, The Winners, Anxious People and two novellas, And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer and The Deal of a Lifetime, as well as one work of nonfiction, Things My Son Needs to Know About the World. His books are published in more than forty countries. His next novel, My Friends, will be published in May 2025. He lives in Stockholm, Sweden, with his wife and two children. Connect with him on Facebook and Twitter @BackmanLand or on Instagram @Backmansk.
©2025 V Williams
Rosepoint Publishing 
thank you, Carla. it was interesting that most of the ladies had the same impression of the amount of ice hockey strategy, kids, coaches, and their parents. if i remember right, only one lady had a son…grandson(?)…who played. she loved all the hockey descriptions but was equally amazed at the turn of events in the book. it certainly is about the characterizations, isn’t it. i didn’t read the 2nd, and the CE read the 3rd in the series. i thought a man would appreciate it more than i. well, turns out, he’s not a big ice hockey fan either. he’s from Idaho originally, I’m a California girl–so even when i lived in the colder half, northern California, there was no hockey. it seems a violent game–worse than football for injury to the players?
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Beartown is a favourite of mine. I love hockey, but for me, that was a small part of the book and it was the characterizations that gripped me. Nice review, Virginia.
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