Beartown...Mighty Ducks for Grownups

Beartown

By Fredrik Backman

Oh, this one was a surprise for me, one of those amazingly delightful, didn’t see it coming- how come no one ever told me to read this before books.

For fans of Mighty Ducks, imagine the feeling you had watching that as a 10 year old, and then add a bunch of grown up topics like family and love and community and sexuality and that’s what this book is- one big Gordon Bombay's “back and better than ever” love fest for grownups.

This book centers around a hockey town and a hockey team and the community that makes up Beartown, but you don’t have to even remotely like hockey to enjoy this book.

This book unfolds like the best kind of movie, the characters are flawed, and for that, they are perfect- and you love them, as you hate them (my favorite kind of character- the ones you root for, even though they maybe aren’t as pure as you would hope, or their choices were not perfect, but isn’t that what life is?!?).

The town – Beartown- this cold and dark place, where it’s almost always winter, is a character all on its own. You can feel the bite of the wind and the smell of smoke from far away fires and the decades of beer spilled on the floor of the local bar, you can actually feel the bottom of a shoe suction to that wood as you imagine walking up to order a pint- this book is visceral.

Even sound plays a part with the author repeatedly writing the word “Bang” to mean a gun shot, or a hockey puck being slapped into a goal, or any other series of repetitive sounds which all run like a theme throughout the narrative. The repetitive nature of this started off cheeky, then got annoying, but in the end, it was actually quite brilliant (and bleeds over into the sequel by the way).

And all that without even a word of plot- which is stellar all on its own!!! This is not a character driven story but a story of a town and the people in that town and the choices they have made, or will make and why- all to answer the question that opens the book – who was in the woods with a gun – Bang.

I can’t say enough how much I enjoyed this book.

I will say there are some very heavy topics in this book so without any spoilers, if you are Highly Sensitive, maybe steer clear, but I thought this book was a “don’t miss” for anyone who has ever liked a great read or a game of hockey. There is a sequel, which I will review separately, but this book certainly stands alone without it, so don’t be shy if you don’t want to commit to two books.

This was a 5 Star read for me!

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