Bear Town: the Swedish Broadchurch

Bear Town (by Fredrik Backman) shouldn't appeal to me. 

In fact, if I'd actually read the plot description before using my Audible credit on it, I wouldn't have bothered. But I was looking for a wintry, Scandi book for my December reading challenge and this was a title I'd seen several times, so I took a punt. 

It's slow. It's got a huge cast. It's about ice-hockey. 

I effing LOVED it. 

Bear Town, a small town in Northern Sweden, is dying. 'If you reach Bear Town, you've gone too far' pretty much sums the place up. The factory jobs are dissapearing, shops are closing, and house prices are nosediving. 

But their junior (seventeen-year-old) ice-hockey team has a real chance. They are about to play a game that could turn them into the best team in the country. Kevin, their star player, has a future so bright that a professional ice-hockey career is almost certain. If they win this game, they'll become an ice-hockey destination. Money will pour into the team, and the town. These boys could save them all. 

That means that the drama surrounding the ice-rink is on par with major league teams. The inner-politics of the management is complex and vicious, and teenage boys are discussed in the same tone as race horses, or cattle herds. Everyone in town is on a scale between 'very interested' and 'will commit actual assault for the club'. The boys themselves balance brutal training and the pressure of their entire future, alongside teenage drama and family worries. 

At the start of the book we know two things - that something terrible happened on the night of the game, and that sometime later, a girl will go into the woods and shoot someone. 

Things are admittedly slow at the beginning, but while I would criticise another book for that, this book does it in an assured way. This isn't a pacing issue, or a lack of conflict, this is an author methodically placing pieces on the board, ready for the game to truly begin. He establishes hockey as both a religion and a potential saviour, he introduces the main characters (the manager and his family, the coaches, the players, and other significant town members) so that you know how they all fit together.

Only then does he unleash the conflict. 

It reminded me of Broadchurch. That's far more of a murder mystery, but it takes time to establish that insular community and its players. We learn just enough about them all that by the time the body is found, we are caught up in the drama as it ricochets through the town. 

(Content warning: this book focuses on a sexual assault and so I will mention that plot point below, in a non-detailed way. There are also mentions of homophobia.) 

Instead of Broadchurch's child murder, this involves a sexual assault on the night of the big game. I think every woman is wary of a story in which sexual assault is the main plot point, but this never shies away from its questioning of how assault accusations are treated, especially when the accused is 'too big to fail'. 

This isn't just he said, she said, this is it doesn't matter if what she said is true because one girl matters less than a town. The text explicitly calls out the way she is immediately de-humanised with the chilling words 'it didn't happen, and if it did, she deserved it'.

The victim is the daughter of the team manager (a former NHL player and local-boy-done-good), her mother is a career-woman lawyer who has never fit in with the small town Hockey-mums. The attacker is the town's golden boy, resident rich-kid, living with emotionally neglectful parents who demand success in every aspect of his life. Hockey is built up as the salvation of this town from the start, and then halfway it forces every devotee to question exactly what is more important to them. The reader, who has now got to know a huge chunk of the people involved, can feel the weight of what's about to be unleashed on the victim as keenly as she can.

I loved the subtlety given to Mia and her family. The story avoids the cliche at every turn. Mia understands what is about to happen to her and her family (she is a teenage girl with internet access in the Me Too era) whereas her mother is still shocked at the unfairness of it all. Her parents have already lost a baby to cot-death and for them Kevin becomes a solid enemy they can fight, in a way they couldn't fight the thing that took their first child.

There are always going to be those who are unable to look inwards at their own behaviour - Kevin's father unleashes all his money and power attempting to save his son, the black-jacketed thug fans unthinkingly intimidate Mia's family and prevent outsiders reporting on the story, and parents of players seethe at the way their own children are losing out because of the report against Kevin. Nearly everyone else has to face up to some uncomfortable truths about just what they are willing to accept for the good of the team, or, if they aren't that honest, at least squirm uncomfortably as they de-humanise Mia and look askance at her father.   

This unease is mentioned even before the attack. Jokes in the locker room - about women, and gay people - make some uncomfortable, but even the closeted gay player fears being left out of the team atmosphere more than the jokes. A hockey mum listens to her friend screaming homophobic insults at a teenager and accepts that when parents have put their children's future - and their own financial well-being - on the line, things sometimes boil over. Early on the victim's mother remembers how she refused to accept a sexist jibe from one of the sponsors and how the next event immediately removed the 'plus one' invites.

So much of this book is about what it is to be part of a team, and embracing the things you hate as well as the things you love. In this age of stan culture, when love for a team, a fandom, or a political belief can so easily turn to bullying and threats - it's an interesting look at how difficult it is for some people to draw the line between right and wrong, when 'winning' in the only goal.

The only issue I have is that, for all that we are in a remote Swedish town, it doesn't feel Swedish at all. If you'd told me it was set in Canada, I wouldn't have questioned it. I wasn't sure if that was a choice with the translation or the author's style. It isn't helped by the narration, excellent as it is, which gives them all light West Country accents (associating it even more with West Country-set Broadchurch). This is almost certainly a choice by the publishers - narrators are rarely given free rein on accents. 

There are two more books in this series (Us Against You, and The Winners). I will absolutely be checking them out.