Beartown by Fredrik Backman

Reviewed by Jeanne

 Beartown is a small community whose ice hockey A-team was second in the nation about twenty years ago, but still carries the pride of those days. One member of that team even went to play in Canada in the NHL for a while.  Now, with jobs dwindling and no tourism or industry—or as one character puts it all they have is “darkness, cold, and unemployment”-- Beartown once again has pinned its hopes on ice hockey.  They have a great team, a team that might just make it into the championship round and bring a new rink, new training facilities, and new life to Beartown.

Then there is an incident which tears the town and the team apart.  Can Beartown survive?

I may have mentioned a time or twelve that I love Book Bingo because it encourages me to read books I might not pick up otherwise.  That was the case with the first Backman book I read, A Man Called Ove (and which I loved) and so it was with the second when the square told me to read a book about sports.  I don’t hate sports, I just don’t know that I like to read about them all that much.  And then I remembered that Backman’s Beartown was about ice hockey.

Well, it is.  And it isn’t.

Backman has a deep understanding of his characters and is an artist at revealing them to the reader, giving each one multiple layers and facets.  There’s a full cast here indeed:  Peter, the former champion, who has returned home to help the town win again, bringing with him his attorney wife and two children, bright Maya and her younger brother, Leo; Kevin, the new golden boy who may bring glory to the town; Sune, the old man who has coached the A-team for decades but who knows that he’s going to be pushed out; and Amat, whose mother immigrated to Beartown and works as a cleaner so that her son can have a better life and play this game that he loves with all his heart and soul.  There are numerous other supporting characters who can seem overwhelming at first, but they all have important roles to play in the drama. 

What I love about Backman’s writing is that his characters aren’t often predictable.  Some who seem unlikable at first may emerge as heroes while the seemingly sympathetic person turns out to care more for his own agenda than for the greater good.

More than anything, this is an examination of human character and society and made a much greater impression on me than I would have imagined.  There are some things that I may quibble with—Backman likes to leap forward to the future and occasionally tantalize his audience with hints of what happened to a character—but I also have to admit those make for memorable impressions.

If you like tough stories well told, peopled by fully developed characters, moments when you will cringe and cheer, and an exploration of both the light and dark in human beings, then by all means pick up Beartown.  You may even want to try the sequel, Us Against You, which continues the story of some of the characters.  A third book is in the works.

And I don’t know beans about hockey.

Starvation Lake by Bryan Gruley

Reviewed by Jeanne

Gus Carpenter grew up in the town of Starvation Lake, escaped to become a reporter at the Detroit Times, and now with has journalist career in tatters he’s editing the hometown paper.  His out of town bosses aren’t fans of hard-hitting news stories or even medium hitting: they want the social news, local sports, and stories that will encourage advertising.  The rest of the town isn’t really welcoming either, since they hold Gus responsible for missing that one goal that would have won the state high school hockey championship.  It was the town’s one shot at fame, and things have gone downhill ever since.  If they could, they’d even blame him for the death of Jack Blackburn, the coach who almost took them all the way, only to die in a snowmobile accident on the lake.

Now pieces of that old snowmobile have turned up—in the wrong lake.  What really happened that night? And what other secrets lie hidden in Starvation Lake?

When this book came out in 2009, it received a lot of praise from the mystery readers on the DorothyL list.  They talked about the good writing, the strong characterization and clever plotting.  One even said that she never thought she would read and enjoy a book about hockey.  I didn’t think I would either, which is why I put off reading it this long.  On the other hand, one patron I recommended the book to didn’t like it so as penance I decided I had better read it before I suggested it to anyone else.

The verdict?  I enjoyed it. I will say that the book started a bit slowly, but much of it was letting the reader get a feel for the town and the people. The town is almost a character itself:  it reminded me of so many of the little towns here in the mountains where jobs are few but the people keep trying to hang on with steely determination and sometimes just sheer cussedness. The plot, like the town, has its share of grit and its share of shady business deals and political maneuvering.   There is a lot of hockey action but understanding or even caring about the game isn’t required; he does use it to good advantage in revealing certain aspects of personality.

Gus, the narrator, is a wholly believable creation; we may not always agree with his choices but we understand why he makes them.  Most of the rest of the cast are people from Gus’ past, his friends and his enemies. These are people he’s known his whole life, which means there’s a lot of personal baggage associated. In a few places the reader may spot things before Gus does simply because he’s too close to parts of the story.

Despite the slow start, the story gained steam and I raced through the last 150 pages to see what would happen.  There were some good twists and turns in both plot and action, and a mostly satisfying resolution.  I’m already reading the second book, The Hanging Tree, and so far I would say that you wouldn’t have to read the books in order. I just prefer to do so.  The third book is The Skeleton Box and, according to his website, he’s at work on a fourth.