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Title: Beartown: a Novel by Fredrik Backman, translated into English by Neil Smith
Details: Copyright 2016, Washington Square Press
Synopsis (By Way of Back Cover): ""It's only a game. It only resolves tiny, insignificant things. Such as who gets validation. Who gets listened to. It allocates power and draws boundaries and turns some people into stars and others into spectators. That's all."
A tiny community deep in the forest, Beartown hasn't been the best at anything in a long time. But down by the lake stands an old ice rink, and in that ice rink Kevin, Amat, Benji, and the rest of the town’s junior ice hockey team are about to compete in the national semifinals— and they actually have a shot at winning. All the hopes and dreams of this place now rest on the shoulders of a handful of teenage boys.
Under that heavy burden, the semifinal match becomes the catalyst for a violent act that will leave a young girl traumatized and a town in turmoil.
This is a story about a town and a game, but even more about loyalty, commitment, and the responsibilities of friendship; the people we disappoint even though we love them; and the decisions we make every day that come to define us. In this story of a small forest town, Fredrik Backman has found the entire world."
Why I Wanted to Read It: I freely admit I care little to nothing about professional sports on almost every level. All the same, I can (usually!) appreciate the usual bigger themes of so-called sports stories, like community, civil pride, and teamwork. I'm also far more willing to appreciate these themes when my options for fiction are limited.
How I Liked It: Do you like twists? Stories with a catch? They can be gimmicky, sure, but they can also be fascinating. I'll tell you straight out that I'm not going to give away the twist in this particular book. But I will talk about everything else a lot, including a crucial plotpoint.
Beartown is a small-and-getting-smaller rural town that is kept alive, by all accounts, thanks to its junior hockey team. As you might expect, this isn't just a "hockey town", this is place where hockey is a religion unto itself. It's also a town rife with homophobia, misogyny, and xenophobia.
Everyone involved, from the team's general manager, to its coach, to its players be they stars, aspiring stars, hangers-on, or transplants, breathes the religion of hockey. Even their families/partners/friends who aren't involved are at least well aware of the way of life in Beartown.
And then, things are rocketed when a star player rapes the daughter of a man important to the team. Sides are taken and the accusing girl and her family become outcasts.
People must do the right thing, even though the town has made it nearly impossible. A surprising (yet still plausible) conclusion is reached and an even more surprising (and satisfying) twist awaits at the end.
Let me say upfront that had I realized this was a translation, I probably wouldn't have read it. I've had success with translated fiction (including books I love, like the Chocolat series, by Joanne Harris), but only when it was translated by the actual author. That said, I have read successful translations and if they weren't fiction, they were for an author with a distinctive style that was maintained by the translator.
This particular translator manages to preserve the author's apparent distinct way with description ("the president is sitting at his desk eating a sandwich the way a German shepherd would try to eat a balloon filled with mayonnaise", pg 60; "the way his friend is looking at him now leaves marks", pg 142; "The wind gets up in the darkness, whistling across the snow, but at the last moment it seems to decide to leave the boys alone. Only touches them fleetingly, tentatively, like hesitant fingertips touching someone else's skin for the first time." pg 277) but I was literally seventy-five pages into the book before it was clear in what country this is taking place, when someone bets someone else "a thousand kroner." The slang used by the characters is heavily American and other than "kroner" I didn't catch any Swedish words, although a few of the names suggest that, once you know it's Sweden. By contrast, when I read the Chocolat books, for example, they are scattered with enough French that it's clear that's the language that's being spoken and where the story takes place, but still readable in English.
The book has a very, very, very slow start that I don't know is attributable to the translation, or just the author's pacing. The book doesn't seem to actually find its footing until the daughter of a man important to the team is attacked at a party, over 170 pages into a 418 page book. The previous 170 feel like setting up the scene (who all these many, many, many characters are) and that's important for impact, but after 170 pages it starts to drag. Once the attack occurs, we start to have some sort of pay off.
I've spoken before about what I call "cartoon cruelty" by which I mean someone in fiction is over-the-top cruel to someone and it doesn't land in the book. People in reality are over-the-top cruel all the time, but conveying that in fiction is tricky: do it right and you have an accurate picture, do it wrong and you have what looks like a cheap ploy for sympathy for your main. This book is the rare example that actually does it right and proves it can be done. It has the benefit of this being a real world issue (in the literary examples I've mentioned before, yes, insensitive comments from friends and family and emotional abuse from parents are absolutely examples of real world issues! But generally you don't have published quotes of the abuse on the record) with horribly, as I said, plenty of examples of people displaying the type of cruelty mentioned in the book:
That's why no one asks what the boy did; as soon as the girl starts to talk [about the rape] [the police] interrupt her instead with questions about what she did. Did she go up the stairs ahead of him or behind him? Did she lie down on the bed voluntarily or was she forced? Did she unbutton her own blouse? Did she kiss him? No? Did she kiss him back then? Had she been drinking alcohol? Had she smoked marijuana? Did she say no? Was she clear about that? Did she scream loudly enough? Did she struggle hard enough? Why didn't she take photographs of her bruises right away? Why did she run from the party instead of saying something to the other guests? (pg 235)
[The police] have to gather all the information, they say, when they ask the same question ten times in different ways in order to see if she changes her answer. This is a serious allegation, they remind her, as if it's the allegation that's the problem. (pg 234)
She's fifteen, above the age of consent, and he's seventeen, but he's still "the boy" in every conversation. She's "the young woman." (pg 234)
"I'm a woman myself, so I take the word 'rape' very seriously. Very, very seriously! And that's why I think we need to raise our children to understand that's not the sort of thing you lie about. And we all know that she's lying, this young woman. The evidence is overwhelmingly in the boy's favor, and there's not a shred of a reason for him to have done what he's accused of. We don't wish to harm the young woman, we don't wish her family ill, but what sort of signal does it send if we don't put our foot down here? That all girls can cry 'rape!' the minute their affections aren't reciprocated? I'm a woman myself and that's why I take this very seriously. Because everyone in here knows that this young woman's father is trying to play politics with it. He clearly couldn't bear the fact that there might be bigger stars on the team that he hims..." (pgs 347 and 348)
Speaking of cruelty, I'm not sure how much to chalk this up to cultural differences, but this book goes hard on the homophobia, even by sports culture standards. It's more than the team members accusing each other of being gay as derogatory and making occasional jokes, it's also a coach remembering his own father telling him he could be whatever he liked "so long as you aren't gay", talking about homosexuality as a "weapon of mass destruction" and thinking far more about two cis men having sex and what it meant than you'd think a supposed heterosexual man could. It's also the team having jokes, yes, but the most elaborate, disgusting (again, even for the setting) jokes about lesbians (and not of the "as long as they're hot/can't we watch" fetishism) and some truly horrifying jokes about gay men. All of this the backdrop to one of the star players and arguably the best player on the team (NOT the one accused of sexual assault) being gay and closeted. A coach talks about his "revulsion" at two men kissing. In the end, the coach at least credits himself as being better than his homophobic father by at least questioning those views, and the gay player doesn't get the ending you might expect (that is not the twist, by the way).
Along with the homophobia, there's the misogyny! Seriously, it's actually almost surprising. I'm of course comparing this to sports fan culture in the US and know nothing about sports fan culture in Sweden, and this could be more about this particular town as a whole (small towns and small minds, as the saying goes) but it still gave me pause.
Girls aren't allowed to like hockey even just a little bit in Beartown. Ideally they shouldn't like it all. Because if you like the sport you must be a lesbian, and if you like the players, you're a slut. (pg 330)
The wife of a man connected to the team has two children and works full-time as an attorney, and she's regularly met with scorn and whispers for being a working mother. Rebuking a sports fan for his attire, he expresses what's portrayed as common bewilderment both in being criticized and in being criticized by a woman specifically. Just about all the higher ups in Beartown hockey hate and deride women as well.
If the homophobia and the misogyny of the town don't get you, the racism and xenophobia will. Slurs abound (I counted at least one anti-Romany slur), and immigrants are never allowed to forget they're immigrants.
With all of this type of power structure, it's almost inevitable we get the conflict we did and quite surprising that the author managed to pull off a relatively realistic, happy-enough ending, along with the twist itself. It's suggested that Beartown might just change its homophobic, misogynistic, racist ways, maybe just a little.
The twist at the end is nothing cheap, incidentally. It's perfectly placed and changes the whole tone of the book, and is done well enough to provide a thoroughly satisfying finish. The twist does what a good twist should do, make you look at the rest of the story in a different light. Add to that the fact it adds a nuanced layer to an important story and you've got a pretty perfect twist.
While the book might start slow, it's worth the read, not just for the twist, but for the fact there are tropes that can actually be done just right.
Notable: Again, I'm not sure if this is a cultural thing in Sweden I'm missing or if it's just the fact several characters just happen to be fifteen but
"You never have the sort of friends you have when you're fifteen ever again. Even if you keep them for the rest of your life, it's never the same as it was then." (pg 27)
But the friends you have when you're fifteen years old obviously aren't going to miss a thing like that. (pg 51)
When you're fifteen years old, no look can hurt you more. (pg 52)
Never again do you find the friends like the ones you have when you're fifteen years old. (pg 222)
There's several more like this?
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A bar patron expresses concern that people might try to blame the rapist's actions on hockey. The proprietress of the bar makes a curious stand:
"IS that why you're here? To talk about that? Sweet Jesus...you men. It's never your fault, is it? When are you going to admit that isn't 'hockey' that raises these boys, it's YOU LOT? In every time and every place, I've come across men who blame their own stupidity on crap they themselves invented. 'Religion causes wars,' 'guns kill people,' it's all the same old bullshit."
"I didn't mean..., " [he] tries, but has to duck when she tries to slap him again.
"Keep your trap shut when I'm talking! Fucking men! YOU'RE the problem! Religion doesn't fight, guns don't kill, and you need to be very fucking clear that hockey has never raped anyone! But do you know who do? Fight and kill and rape?"
[He] clears his throat. "Men?"
"MEN! It's always fucking men!" (pg 326)
The bar proprietress is shown to be a sympathetic character, which is why the guns line in particular gave me pause, as in this country, it's used as a gun rights/anti-gun safety measure (overlooking, of course, that accidental gun deaths happen and the fact guns themselves might not kill a person, but they make it extremely easy). Sweden has considerably different gun laws than the US and presumably a very different culture related to them, so I'm going to assume this was meant to be the character expressing incredible frustration rather than making perfect sense.
Final Grade: B+
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