Beartown (Backman)
(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)
This was a book group selection. Another one that got off to a slow start because it jumped around a lot. I found myself dividing time between and a novella and a whole lot of manga. I started reading it in Libby, but I switched back to kindle for the "infinite scroll" feature.
The book takes place in a dying town called Beartown which is slowly disappearing into the woods as businesses close up and people move to other places, like neighboring Hed. The town has heart, though, and hockey. And this year's junior hockey team is going to the semifinals (against rival Hed) and then, if they win, to the finals. That will lead to greater things and turn this town around.
I'll start with that because the book starts with a scene of someone pointing a gun at someone else in the woods (literally, we don't know who) and says that this is the story of how this came to be. We then get a couple hundred pages about high school hockey. But it's a hockey town.
Introductions for the major players fly at you pretty quickly, so you're not sure who to care about. When we met Peter and Kira, it's hard to believe that they're a married couple, let alone one that's been together long enough to have two kids. (Three, actually -- that bombshell is dropped midway through.) Peter is GM for the hockey team, the Bears, which includes the juniors and the A-team. The A-team isn't seniors or high school students (although apparently high school can play) but a professional team, or at least semi-pro, that gets paid. From the there, some guys move on. This also explained how Peter made it NHL from the juniors and without going up to the A-team. Again, it's Norway, so it doesn't follow what I might be used to if I actually followed hockey, or high school and college sports.
Speaking of Norway, the most graphic part of the novel involves a 17-year-old boy and a 15-year-old girl. Had that been in America, the girl being 15 might've counted a little more against the older boy. But the town's reaction might not have.
So Peter's the GM of the club. David is the coach of the juniors who are chasing glory. Sune is the old man who is the coach of the A-team and whom the president and the board want to resign on his own volition for the good of the club. It's the worst-kept secret. David will get that job, assuming his wins the finals because no one promotes a loser. Seriously. Maybe not in those words, but that's the feeling.
David's star player is Kevin Erdahl, who can do no wrong. That's mostly because whenever he does, Benji is there to take the fall. On the ice and off, it's Benji's job to protect Kevin, and that's why Benji can get away with anything, including being stoned most of the time they aren't on the ice. Kevin wouldn't survive on the ice without Benji. He almost doesn't survive off the ice without him.
Fatima cleans up the trash at the hockey rink. She has a son Amat who practices every morning for an hour before school. Sune comes in early one day (clearing out his office before the inevitable) and sees him. He leaves a note for David to get him for the juniors quick. David puts Amat through a brutal tryout and then puts him on the team. He's crucial in their victory. He's one of the team now. He's a Bear.
After the game, there's a party at Kevin's house. His parents (who are never named in the book, and I confirmed that with wikipedia) are away as they are very often. They rarely get to see Kevin's big moments. Another player bets Kevin that he can't score with the GM's daughter Maya (who came to the party with her friend Ana). Maya likes Kevin, and Kevin has shown some interest in her. Ana likes Benji, but he bails on the party as soon as he sees 15-year-olds coming into the house. Events that night will tear about the town as no one wants to take sides and yet everyone does.
Maya runs out of there and runs home, although she's spotted by Benji who leaves her there because she wants to be alone. She fakes being sick the next day and destroys all the evidence because she doesn't want anyone else to know. She believes that so far Kevin ony hurt her, but if it gets out then he will have hurt everyone. She tells Ana only because Ana came across Kevin and when they met, he looked scared. She knew something had happened and came over. It lasts a week before Maya comes forward and tells her parents what happened. They go to the police even though it's almost a week later, and she answers their questions and goes to the hospital to be checked out. The police show up to question Kevin and take him off the bus before it can leave for the finals.
And that's everyone's biggest problem: that Kevin will miss the big game. And he'll become the victim. And this hockey town will be ripped apart. The father tries to bribe or bully people. The mother, on the other hand, was aware something happened a week earlier because she found, and destroyed, all the evidence in her home, including a button that flew off Maya's blouse. But she's a mother first, and has to protect her son.
One wild card is Amat. He loves Maya (or at least had a crush on her) and fought his way upstairs to Kevin's room. He opened the door when it was happening, and his intrusion stopped the attack. But he'd been drinking, so he isn't such a reliable witness, and maybe 5,000 kroner will help convince him of that.
I appreciated some of the fast-forwarding to 10 years later so we can see how things turned out for some people but that actually left more questions unanswered. According to Good Reads, there are two more books listed as being in this series although I don't know if they are sequels of some sort or not.
I enjoyed the book, even though I wasn't sure if I would, and of course, it was going to be maddening as the people responded to a touchy situation. I just hope I forget too many of the details before the book club meets.
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