My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐/5
“If you are honest, people may deceive you. Be honest anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfishness. Be kind anyway. All the good you do today will be forgotten by others tomorrow. Do good anyway.”
So this book was a slow start, I only discovered the series by accidentally buying a physical copy of the second book on sale somewhere, thinking it looked interesting and trying to read that first. After realizing It didn't make sense, I did some investigating and found out my dumb moment.
I bought Beartown on my kindle, unsure if I would enjoy this story, and after researching Goodreads reviews, wanting to know what I got myself into first. This book related a lot to my childhood and I could often picture myself as all the different POV's, often remembering my own struggles through the life as a child playing hockey, father as the coach, and a town with nothing but hockey.
This fictional tale represents a small town that everyone shits on, called Beartown. This town has been faced with loss after loss, left with nothing left but hockey and the players that could build a professional career out of this team. It follows many different people such as Benji, Amat, Kiara and a few others within this and the second book.
“One of the plainest truths about both towns and individuals is that they usually don't turn into what we tell them to be, but what they are told they are.”
It goes through the motions of teens struggling to figure out their lives and coming into their early teen/adult years, and the struggles, pressures, and challenges they all continue to face throughout the community, school and behind closed doors. It helps reveal why each character is the way they are, and how the only thing they got to unite them all is hockey. Some characters having it being their only career and path to a better life, some a hobby, and some to make their parents happy.
I didn't think that I would like this book, I thought it would a stereotypical love story or the basic thriller game of whose going to win the match. What I didn't expect was to fall so deeply back into my memories that had me smiling and laughing and texting old teammates and opponents to check-in and reminisce. Hockey is a game where your problems stop at the locker room door and you are with your friends and they'll have your back no matter what because nobody messes with their own. It covers the topics that you may not be friends outside of the rink, but once you're inside those doors its another story. You become the stars, and the others become the spectators, cheering you on and wearing your colours with pride.
“It’s only a game. It only resolves tiny, insignificant things. Such as who gets validation. Who gets listened to. It allocates power and draws boundaries and turns some people into stars and others into spectators. That’s all.”
"Hockey hurts. It demands inhuman sacrifices, physically and mentally and emotionally. It breaks feet and tears ligaments and forces him to get out of bed before dawn. It eats all his time, swallows all his energy. So why? Because when he was little he once heard that “there are no former hockey players,” and he knows exactly what that means."
You can't not get invested in this novel, the narration keeps you captivated and allows the characters to become super realistic. If you aren't huge on choppy descriptive writing that will switch multiple narration POV"s throughout the novel, sometimes even mid page. This is how Backman seems to write, and it's what works for his novels and scene setting. This novel uncovers the demands of hockey and how nobody truly sees the demand and the pressure that it places on the already difficult time of these kids lives (and especially ours, if you lived this kind of life like I did.)
“The only thing the sport gives us are moments. But what the hell is life, Peter, apart from moments?"
I wouldn't mind reading this book again, maybe because this small town Canadian girl related to this novel and basically relives her child and teens through this. I felt like it scratched my homesickness itch for awhile. I feel like I should buy a physical copy to match my accidental perfect mistake.
Comments