Beartown by Fredrik Backman (translated by Neil Smith)

"She’s lived here all her life, she knows how quickly information spreads. Someone will know someone who has a brother who’s a cop or has a friend who works at the local paper or a mom who’s a nurse at the hospital. Someone will say something to someone. And all hell will break loose" - Fredrik Backman, Beartown

Beartown (2016) by the bestselling Swedish writer Fredrik Backman is the first novel in his trilogy focusing on life in Beartown, a fictional rural community set in northern Sweden.  It's a town surrounded by a forest that has seen better days. The jobs have pretty much disappeared and the people are moving away.  But the residents who remain in Beartown are loyal and nowhere is that more true than when it comes to the hopes they have pinned on their high school hockey team, the Bears.

And their hopes are not unrealistic because for the first time in many years the Bears have a chance of making it all the way to the top thanks to three great players on the team: seventeen year old Kevin Erdahl who is their star player, seventeen year old Benji Ovich who is Kevin's best friend and almost as good as Kevin on the ice and fifteen year old Amat who has so much speed that the coach is letting him play with the juniors. 

Kevin is wealthy and lives in the Heights, an exclusive part of Beartown.  Benji and Amat come from the Hollow, a poor part of town where families have to struggle.  Hockey is seen as a way to a great future for all three boys.  They have the talent.

SPOILER ALERT  

And then on the night the Bears win a big game Kevin's teammates and classmates attend a party at his house.  His parents are away, the alcohol is flowing, and Kevin is drunk.  Fifteen year old Maya Andersson, the daughter of Peter Andersson who is the General Manager of the Bears, is at the party.  She has a crush on Kevin, most girls in Beartown do.  Maya and Kevin end up kissing but he wants to go further.  Maya says no and Kevin doesn't take no for an answer.  The rest of the novel is the fallout from what happened at the party and how it affects the town and how the different characters we have been introduced to react.  Some rise to the occasion but most do not.

I found Beartown to be a really fine novel.  It can be dark at times but it is wonderfully written and moving as well.  If I have a criticism it might be that Fredrik Backman spends the first 170 pages describing the town, what hockey means to the town and who the various characters are both major and minor. I felt at the beginning that the book was going slow.  But then I switched from kindle to audible and Marin Ireland's first rate narration picked up the pace considerably.  And when I got to the night of the party I was engrossed all the way through to the end of the book.

Later this year I plan to read book two in this series: Us Against You (2018).  I want to find out more about Beartown and how the residents are getting on.  And hopefully learn more about Benji, Amat and my favorite character Ramona the elderly widow who runs the local pub and serves as a kind of therapist for the town locals who stop by for a drink.  

And so it turns out Fredrik Backman who is an excellent writer knew what he was doing in taking his time introducing us to Beartown and its residents because I am on to book two.