Beartown, Fredrik Backman (3.0)
This is my least favorite Backman book so far. While I
usually find his characters whimsical and his plots thoughtful, this book had a
few faults I had a hard time forgiving. Set in a small northern Swedish town,
the plot revolves around the town sport, hockey, and the various players both
on the rink and off. It starts with a gun being held to a teenager’s head and
then takes the reader back to the events that lead up to the event. While that
narrative trick pushed the novel along at a relatively quick pace, I felt much
of the background was contrived to keep you guessing as to who the two people
were. This book was painful to read relative to Backman’s other books – long
with some particularly ugly character behaviors. It seemed to take forever for
someone to do the right thing. I did find it interesting that it was easy to
forget that he is writing about a small town in Sweden, as it often felt that
it could be anywhere. I guess we tend to forget that other countries have some
of the same problems we have.
No comments:
Post a Comment