Welcome to Beartown
Beartown is a small, forest town, already stricken by tragedy in its community. The only way out of this place has always been its hockey club. To others it is just a sport. To Beartown, it is salvation. But when tragedy has already almost torn the hockey club apart, and people have started turning against each other, is there really any hope left for this community?
A broken community tries to pick its pieces, while at the same time fear, anger and shame reign in the town. Violence is bound to arise when judgment and bitterness turns to hatred, and the situation inevitably escalates. The people of Beartown used to be a community, a single unit.
But among politics, a hideous crime and the danger of the hockey club being disbanded, people will start forgetting the things that make them a unit. And, sometimes, it takes a second tragedy to fix the broken aftermath of a first one.
On small societies, crimes, and unity
Us Against You is the sequel of the international bestseller Beartown. It follows along the psyche of a small society, and all the invisible threads that move underneath the surface, making it a complex organism. And when this organism is on the verge of being torn apart, Fredrik Backman has already succeeded in making the reader understand how a whole town can be led to that situation.
The dissection of a community
It takes a lot of effort and skills to lay out the heart of a whole community. The story is full of family bonds, both frail and strong, friendships that endure the worst of hardships, relationships that are or could have been the ideal human situation. There is hatred, fear and judgment, bitterness and competition. But there is also sacrifice, forgiveness and hope. Backman has created a dark and gloomy tunnel, but he hasn’t forgotten to still put a light at the end of it for us all to see.
This book will shed light to a lot of dark corners of the human soul. However, you will see that every story has, indeed, some happiness inside. And, reading Us Against You, you can’t help but feel a little bit more of an optimist as you finish the last page.
As all of Backman’s works up to now, Us Against You is an intelligent, incredibly well set up story, one strongly recommended for fans of general fiction. If you are a fan of Fredrik Backman’s works, you will not want to miss this incredible most recent addition!
