My last post focused on two authors new to me. This one is about one author and three of his books. His name is Fredrik Backman and the books I read have been translated by Neil Smith. There is just something about his writing style that appeals to me (and many others), and so I thought I would recommend him and tell a little about the three books I have read.
First Two Book Titles – Beartown and Sequel Us Against You
Author: Fredrik Backman
Date Read: Beartown – August 2019 Us Against You – July 2021
Type of Book: Fiction
Date Published: Beartown – Originally published in Swedish in 2016, Copyright 2016, English Translation copyright 2017, First Atria Books hardcover edition April 2017. Also, I see that there is a series on HBO based on the book.
Us Against You – 2017
Publisher: Beartown – Atria Books Us Against You – Washington Square Press
Ideas Expressed/Message/Plot:
Beartown
The struggle of the characters, the struggle of a community, and the struggles real people face in this life. Through hockey, truth, and individual strength, a community learns the cost of keeping secrets and expecting too much in return.
Us Against You
A town’s obsession with hockey, people’s own perceptions and choices, healing or not after trauma.
Favorite Characters/Quotes/Lines:
Beartown
Ebook
First Line (Pg 7): Late one evening toward the end of March, a teenager picked up a double-barreled shotgun, walked into the forest, put the gun to someone else’s forehead, and pulled the trigger.
Pg. 101: A simple truth, repeated as often as it is ignored, is that if you tell a child it can do absolutely anything, or that it can’t do anything at all, you will in all likelihood be proven right.
Pg. 190: It doesn’t take a lot to be able to let go of your child. It takes everything.
Us Against You
Ebook
Pg. 11: “What does it take to be a good parent? Not much. Just everything. Absolutely everything.”
Pg. 12-13: “No matter how old they get, we never want to cry in front of our children. We’d do anything for them; they never know because they don’t understand the immensity of something that is unconditional. A parent’s love is unbearable, reckless, irresponsible. They’re so small when they sleep in their beds and we sit beside them, shattered to pieces inside. It’s a lifetime of shortcomings, and feeling guilty, we stick happy pictures up everywhere, but we never show the gaps in the photograph album, where everything that hurts is hidden away. The silent tears in darkened rooms. We lie awake, terrified of all the things that can happen to them, everything they might be subjected to, all the situations in which they could end up victims.”
Pg. 19: “In the silence of the forest you don’t have to scream to be threatening.”
Pg. 40: “It is divided in the way that all worlds are divided between people: between those who are listened to and those who aren’t.”
Pg. 58: “…like a monster made up of sorry and unspoken words.”
Pg. 264-265: ”Men are busy, but boys don’t stop growing. Sons want their fathers’ attention until the precise moment when fathers want their sons’. From then on we’re all doomed to wish that we’d fallen asleep beside them more often, while their head could still fit on our chest. That we’d spent more time sitting on the floor while they were playing. Hugged them while they still let us.”
Pg. 316: “Anxiety. It’s such a peculiar thing. Almost everyone knows what it feels like, yet none of us can describe it.”
When I finished this book, I felt:
Beartown
Overwhelmed by all the emotions that come with a story like this – anger, frustration, sadness, resignation, relief, hopeful.
Us Against You
Like there was so much wisdom and insight in this book (hence all the quotes I marked as I was reading – I did not share them all here).
Notes/Comments about book and author:
Beartown
I really enjoy this author’s writing style and the way he weaves future events within the current plot line (in ten years time…he/she will…). Adds a dimension like foreshadowing but not really because the narrator is telling the reader what is going to happen, yet the reader still is intrigued and wants clarification. Additionally, the book hooked me from the very first line, and I was enveloped by the town, the citizens of the town, the forest, all of it. The story is representative of what a community truly is and how citizens can be caught up in the “livelihood” of the town rather than being concerned about the people in the town who have been hurt and shattered.
Us Against You
Told from the point of view of a third person collective narrator, this novel immerses the reader right into the heart of the town, the people, the conflicts, and the triumphs. By using this point of view, the author endears to us the characters and the struggles. I highlighted so many parts of this book that I could not share them all without giving away too much of the story. I was captivated by Beartown and I was captivated by its sequel, Us Against You. Truly an accurate portrayal of real life, real struggles, real people.
Book Title: Anxious People
Date Read: September 2021
Type of Book: Fiction
Date Published: April 25, 2019
Publisher: Atria Books
Ideas Expressed/Message/Plot:
I have to use a quote here because it is so good and it encapsulates the book:
Pg. 7: “This story is about a lot of things, but mostly about idiots. So it needs saying from the outset that it’s always very easy to declare that other people are idiots, but only if you forget how idiotically difficult being human is. Especially if you have other people you’re trying to be a reasonably good human being for.
Because there’s such an unbelievable amount that we’re all supposed to be able to cope with these days. You’re supposed to have a job, and somewhere to live, and a family, and you’re supposed to pay taxes and have clean underwear and remember the password to your damn Wi-Fi. Some of us never manage to get the chaos under control, so our lives simply carry on, the world spinning through space at two million miles an hour while we bounce about on its surface like so many lost socks.”
Favorite Characters/Quotes/Lines:
I had twenty-two quotes highlighted that I recorded in my notes. I will not share them all here, but so much of what he wrote spoke to me either for the wisdom conveyed or the stylistic choices. It was hard to pick just a few.
Ebook
Pg. 129: “She was just one person out of several billion, and most people never become individuals to us. They’re just people. We’re just strangers passing each other, your anxieties briefly brushing against mine as the fibers of our coats touch momentarily on a crowded sidewalk somewhere. We never really know what we do to each other, with each other, for each other.”
Pg. 137: “She had learned to cry almost without tears now, for practical reasons.”
Pg. 225: “‘Have you ever held a three-year-old by the hand on the way home from preschool?’
‘No.’
‘You’re never more important than you are then.’”
Pg. 292: “When the snow arrives autumn has already done all the work, taking care of all the leaves and carefully sweeping summer away from people’s memories. All winter had to do was roll in with a bit of freezing weather and take all the credit, like a man who’s spent twenty minutes next to a barbecue but has never served a full meal in his life.”
When I finished this book, I felt:
That the author truly captured the scope of people’s anxieties.
Notes/Comments about book and author:
This author has a way of writing that blends the normal with the absurd while speaking directly to the reader. The way he tells his stories makes me subtly smile at his acute observation of human nature – not just in this book, but in all three of the books I have read. (I listened to A Man Called Ove and enjoyed that as well.) Moreover, his style must translate well as his meaning, humor, true observations of humans, and hope are conveyed throughout the story. While he may be telling a tale of fiction, he is speaking directly to the individual doing the reading and including himself in the conversation. Additionally, his observations are true and accurate. He gets “us” – the human race. We are all just trying to make it one day at a time, experiencing the highs and the lows and everything in between.
I highly recommend this author because he tells the truth without being judgmental and maybe conveys what we all may be thinking or feeling at one time or another but are afraid to admit.