‘Us Against You’ by Fredrik Backman (Beartown # 2)

“Everyone gets a stick. Two nets. Two teams. Us against you.”

This is the sequel to Beartown, and I have to honestly say I bailed on this book once and then found it quite slow in the beginning on the second attempt, but I persevered and ended up liking it better than Beartown! It really ramps up in the middle and then I couldn’t put it down. Crave/HBO now has a series based on the books!

Backman is Swedish and his novels are translated. He has become a favourite author of mine; I especially liked A Man Called Ove and Anxious People. I find each of Backman’s stories different from the others in some way, but he always offers bits of wisdom and insight into humanity. I commend him in this novel for his sympathetic treatment of both being gay in sports, and how to live on in the aftermath of trauma. Sometimes as the narrator, he breaks the fourth wall by making comments directly to the audience (reader), usually with foreshadowing or other philosophical thoughts, which often mercifully softens the blow for what is to come.

Beartown and Us Against You are all about hockey in a small town. The story carries on seamlessly in this sequel, with residents seeking to regroup after all that happened in the first book. Sport continues to be all consuming and political; it hardly seems to be about hockey at all (with more scenes during practise times than actual games). Backman captures the Swedish landscape, small town dynamics, and nuance in relationships so masterfully that even though these books are a bit of a long slow read, to me it was well worth the time. And there’s no need to be a hockey fan to enjoy them.