Cbr17bingo Play (hockey) bingo
Us Against You is the second novel in Backman’s Beartown trilogy, something I didn’t realize until I was well into the novel. I haven’t read book 1, Beartown, but as it turns out, it doesn’t matter much. Anything important from that story is more or less explained in the course of this one. The trilogy is about the people of Beartown, a small remote town in Sweden, where hockey is more than just a game. It is the heart of the community and is the source of intense friendships and violent rivalries. In Us Against You, Beartown is still reeling from recent events involving the star of the hockey team and the daughter of the team’s General Manager. Kevin Erdahl raped Maya Andersson, and there was a witness — a teammate of Kevin’s. Justice is not served, but Kevin leaves town and at the beginning of this novel, the hockey team’s fate is on the line. This is the cause of much anger and conniving amongst members of the Beartown community.
In order to follow the plot, the reader needs to understand the main characters and the groups they represent. Peter Andersson, the team’s GM, is a Beartown native who had a brief career in the NHL. His team was poised to win the championship when the rape happened, and Peter removed Kevin from the team, ensuring their loss. Some people resent Peter for that, but he had support from one very important group — The Pack. The Pack is a group of men who are sort of like the local mafia. The Pack is responsible for much of the hooliganism and violence that surrounds local hockey, particularly when Beartown plays the neighboring community Hed. They have their own special section at the games and wear distinctive black leather coats. Everyone knows not to cross The Pack and its leader Teemu. Peter’s wife Kira is an ambitious attorney who has put her career on hold to support Peter and Beartown hockey, but she is growing increasingly frustrated. The Anderssons are frequent targets for anonymous harassment, receiving crass and threatening texts. Maya is struggling to cope with the rape and its traumatic effects, but she has a good friend Ana on her side. And although she doesn’t know it, her 12-year-old brother Leo is on a personal crusade for revenge. His special target is the Hed hockey team, which has taken away some of Beartown’s best players — guys who were friends of Kevin Erdahl and protected him.
When this novel opens, it looks like Beartown hockey is coming to an end. The rape scandal brought a lot of negative attention to the community, along with stories of game-related community violence. The local council, which governs both Hed and Beartown, seems poised to pull funding from Beartown hockey and concentrate solely on Hed when one councilman named Richard Theo starts acting behind the scenes to manipulate the situation to his benefit. Theo is smart but lacks any moral compass. He quietly approaches people with information, uses online forums to stir the pot, and is making secret deals with all the important actors in Beartown in order to make sure he is the last man standing politically in the long run. At the heart of this wheeling and dealing is the hockey team. Theo finds a way to bring in a controversial new coach, keep Peter as GM, get The Pack on his side, and get other councilors to take the fall whenever things fall apart. The real problem for Peter is that in order to keep the team, which he desperately wants (at great cost to his family), he must agree to the new coach and he must commit to removing The Pack’s special stands in the rink as a show of commitment to fight hooliganism. The latter is a requirement that the team’s new sponsors (arranged by Theo) require. An ugly showdown is in the offing.
As the new coach attempts to rebuild the Beartown team, we learn a lot about the teenagers who refused to give up on Beartown to follow their teammates to Hed. The hockey players have a reputation for toughness, but behind the scenes we see young men who are struggling with depression, coming to terms with their own sexuality, dealing with illness within their families, and getting by day-to-day in hard-scrabble neighborhoods that look upon their hockey stars like gods. Beartown is a struggling town where unemployment, abuse and depression/suicide are of real concern. The hockey team provides not just entertainment but a reason to be proud. That puts a lot of pressure on these teens, and there will be violence and drama as the match between Hed and Beartown looms on the horizon.
Backman includes a lot of triggering situations in this story: rape and the trauma that follows, harassment, physical violence (a lot of that), anti-gay hatred, and tragic death. Despite this heavy subject matter, Backman’s plot development and writing had me hooked. He has a way of writing that tells the reader up front to expect a violent and disturbing showdown, to expect some kind of loss. Yet, even knowing this, the way events play out often surprised me. And even though we are reading about a community falling apart, about families and teens who are hurt and grieving, there are still glimpses of goodness and hope for the characters.