In a Swedish small town miles from anywhere, the only source of local pride is a hockey club that, like the town itself, has seen better days. To many of the townspeople, the fates of the two seem inextricably linked. As the factories close and jobs leave town, the talent pool of young hockey players diminishes in proportion. So it’s understandable that the town’s leaders have gotten hooked on the idea that a rejuvenation of the hockey club could spark a turnaround for Beartown as a whole. When the club’s junior team, lead by a seventeen-year-old phenom, goes on an unlikely run in the national tournament, it gets everyone’s hopes up. But, as hard as it is for anyone in Beartown to accept, there are bigger things in the world than hockey, and they are about to impose themselves on Beartown’s dreams.
Backman does a good job building out the world of Beartown, establishing the hierarchy of the Hockey Club and the local government. There’s no one central protagonist, unless the town itself could be said to fill the role. We meet people like Peter Andersson, the former golden boy whose disappointing NHL tenure still makes him one of Beartown’s most successful sons. He’s returned to be the general manager of the club he once played for, though it feels like he never really gets to call the shot, what with the input of the rich men who control the club’s board. The board wants Peter to fire the adult team’s kindly, philosophical coach, the same man who coached Peter as a boy, and replace him with the junior team’s coach, a man whose win-at-all-costs manner rubs Peter the wrong way despite his undeniable results.
We also get to see the perspectives of many of the team’s players. Star Kevin Erdahl is thriving on the ice despite his parents’ crushing perfectionism. His best friend Benji is the fighter who clears up space for Kevin to shine, but those fights are taking a toll on Benji, as is the secret he’s keeping from everyone in his life. Amat is the youngest member of the junior team, promoted for his incredible skating speed. He’s only hoping that hockey will help him provide for his single mother and keep her from having to do backbreaking work all her life.
Hockey has an impact on the rest of the townspeople, whether they play or not, whether they care about the sport or not. Ramona, the local bar owner, hasn’t been to a game since the death of her former goaltender husband, but she has the ear of the team’s most ardent supporters, a gang of sometimes violent men reminiscent of British soccer hooligans. Tails, the local supermarket owner, is an influential man in town, but his loyalty to Peter often puts him in a difficult position. Peter’s wife Kira is a square peg in a round hole in Beartown. Her career as a successful lawyer makes her an outlier among the town’s women, and a pariah to many at the hockey club.
Then there is Peter’s daughter Maya, a 15-year old guitar player who professes not to care for hocket at all despite harboring a crush on Kevin. When Maya decides to attend the junior team’s semifinal tournament game, and the house party that follows the big win, it sets off a series of events that will force everyone in Beartown to decide who they really are and what they want to see when they look in the mirror. Backman is unsparing in depicting what happens at that party, and renders it an appropriately terrifying read. He does a fair job depicting the horrifying aftermath as well, with lines being predictably drawn and people taking sides, mostly in their own self-interest.
While the characters and plot are fairly sturdy, Backman’s prose leaves a lot to be desired, even making allowances for the vagaries of translation. Backman has this irritating habit of treating platitudes as profundities. He can’t help himself from concluding chapters or sub-chapters with these little buttons trying to sum everything up into a little life-lesson. There the literary equivalent of those insipid decorative signs moms of a certain generation love to hang on their dining room walls. The book could be improved tremendously by merely cutting each and every one of them.
Despite it’s author’s shortcomings as a prose writer, Beartown is still a compelling read, but nowhere near as profound as Backman thinks it is.