Review: Beartown by Fredrik Backman
by Fredrik Backman
🥅 4 🏒 out of 5 🥅
Right from the beginning this book feels ominous. Ominous and quiet and foreboding and profound. In a way, it reminds me of Twin Peaks or the movie Fargo in that it tells a big story woven together by little slice-of-life insights into being human with a lot darkness hanging over the whole thing.
It’s chock full of thoughtful and insightful commentary on the difficulties of being a person. What life does to us and what we do to each other. It’s cautionary tale after cautionary tale about all the ways we fail ourselves and one another. Backman uses his characters to point out our own foibles and blind spots. And I love how often he uses metaphors and similes to get across ideas and themes. There are so many and they’re so well done. They’re my favorite aspect of the book. [“Being a parent makes you feel like a blanket that’s always too small. No matter how hard you try to cover everyone, there’s always someone who’s freezing.”]
I love how unabashedly feminist the book is. It has a lot to say about misogyny without really having to SAY anything at all. I think Backman does an amazing job of showing how often women are casually disrespected, how often their talents are written off, their opinions dismissed, how they’re subject to the whims of violence and power of the men around them, how few people are willing to stand up for them. He also shows different ways they can take back the power that’s been taken from them and how hard it is to do so. Kira, Maya, Fatima, Adri, Jeanette, Kevin’s mom (who, rather appropriately due to her lack of agency, is never given a name) among others, all give us examples. Misogyny makes for a sinister background presence in this book. It’s easy to hear if you’re attuned to it. Otherwise it just feels like… nothing at all out of the ordinary.
I found it a little slow at times but Beartown is an extremely well written, powerful and thought-provoking work with important messages, great storytelling and excellent characters.
4 stars out of 5
⚠️ I honestly had no idea this was basically a story about Brock Turner. If I’d have known that, I probably wouldn’t have read it. I had this recommended to me by a number of people and I bought it and started it before thoroughly checking out the premise and contents. This book is very good but was not one I personally should have picked up and I had a hard time getting through it. Heed the TW/CWs on this one, folks. 👇🏼
⚠️ https://booktriggerwarnings.com/index.php?title=Beartown_by_Fredrik_Backman
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