Fredrik Backman

A Novel

The Winners

Maureen

“This hurts too much to touch with words.”

***

Best character-driven series I’ve ever read. Thank you Backman for the wild ride. I’ll forever be grateful that I got to read your masterpiece.

I just enjoyed the 3 books of this series A LOT. Don’t know anything about hockey but the characters are very well developed. Really good simple story about people who live in snow and near a forest. Hooked from the start till the end of it. 

Barbara

Winners

Fran Lewis

This was a great ending to the Beartown trilogy. By the end, all the loose ends are tied up and we get snapshots of what happens to some of the children later on in life and where they end up. 

As in all small towns, there are secrets, and some of the ones revealed were quite interesting.

It is hard to judge if this would have been as good as a stand-alone book and. honestly, I would have to say no. There is a lot of history between characters by the time you get to the third book. It might be okay but I would advise everyone to start at the beginning with Beartown, to get the whole story. 
 
Whether or not you are a hockey fan, I believe anyone who comes from a small town, or a tight-knit community would understand and really enjoy this series. 

Thank you @netgalley and @simonshusterca for the advanced reading copy.

Veronica Overholt

It will break you into pieces, in the best way possible.

Siya S

It's actually 3.5 stars, rounded up to 4 


  We fool ourselves that we can protect the people we love, because if we accepted the truth we’d never let them out of our sight.

I will always be a Fredrik Backman-stan. Forever.

If you want to see how tribalism and toxic masculinity destroy a community from both inside and out, this is the best fiction series to explore the themes. Here is a sweet farewell to an incredible book series. 

But who are "The Winners", exactly? 
This is going to be a very long review. Because I'm about to ramble. 



It is very difficult to rate this book, considering Beartown and Us Against You have been living rent-free in my brain for a couple of years since I've read them, and now it's time to say goodbye to this incredible series that broke my heart and taught me how to feel. 



Shockingly, I didn't like this one as much as the first two. While it was bittersweet, heartwarming, and tragically poignant, I think this 700-pages story was a tad bit too long. Some parts were repetitive and the red herrings were overdone to the point that by the end of the book I didn't care as much about who'd live and who'd die. It's terrible and sad that some beloved characters had to die, but I don't think telling the reader every other page about that would help with the anticipation. 

So, who are "The Winners", then? 


  The plot
: 
I don't think this series thrives on plots but rather arcs and character developments. It explores the clashes of ideologies and the motives behind one's core values and beliefs. There was no good or bad, just from which perspective one was looking. 

Anyway, this book began 2 years after the incidents in Us Against You - now both Benji and Maya moved out of town. Peter now gave up hockey altogether to help Kira around the office (and baked dozens of bread every other day). Amat tried his best to get into NHL, growing apart from Bobo, who's now an assistant coach to Zackell. The point is - everyone is now all over the place at this point. But they would be rounded up to meet up in Beartown again soon enough....because of a funeral.

In the meantime, Beartown was now growing threefold and being rather superior to Hed. Hatreds were cooking up in the background, and all things were about to blow up in all dimensions. The series was like 


   The Book Launch 
: 
Earlier in September, I had an opportunity to attend an online book launch organized by the Chappaqua Library in NYC. Listening to Fredrik Backman talking about his anxiety and thought process for 60 minutes made me appreciate him even more as a writer. I could listen to him talking about his books for hours on end. He was funny, humble, anxiety-prone, and simply relatable. 

Again, that talk had me looking at Backman in a new light, because as I read "The Winners" I felt as if he was walking on eggshells crafting the story, especially in how he decided on some of his characters' fates. For example, he told us from page one who'd die and repeated it over and over again...was he afraid he'd hurt our feelings? And then he shoehorned some terrible things into the plotline just to never mention it again until the very end, then things happened but got wrapped up in ways that were a little convenient. Everyone miraculously overcame terrible things rather easily, but is this how real life works? 

It felt as if he was too afraid to kill off his own characters or wreaked more havoc on the town. The plot resolved in a fashion that felt too methodical and intentional. I missed the random calamities of life that made Beartown and Us Against You so great. 


  The Characters
:
I wish I could map out the characters and put them into that "chaotic/neutral/lawful good-bad" chart, otherwise, I could just keep on writing another 10,000 words on all of them without end. But I have self-control, so I'll keep this short. 

We were introduced to new characters, while many of the old ones were just...gone. Like they were just being pushed back into the drawer, never to be seen or heard from again. One of my favourite arcs was that of Amat, Bobo, and perhaps Matteo (view spoiler)[ Actually, I'm also impressed when Backman addressed Maya's privileges and compared her situation to Ruth's. I always had a question on whether Kevin and Maya's was the very first case of rape in Beartown or not, and he answered that curiosity with such elaboration and grace. I wouldn't be surprised if Backman read Chanel Miller's Know My Name because it's all in there.  (hide spoiler)]

One of the recurring themes, I notice, was substance abuse and an absence of therapies in these characters' lives. I see that this might be a result of the toxic masculinity that's been cooking up in Beartown, plus the stigma around the mental health profession in itself. I wonder if some things would turn out differently in Beartown Hockey hired a sport psychologist (like in Ted Lasso), because Amat really needed to talk to someone during that time. 

Still, who are "The Winners"? 

I don't think the residents of Beartown, as a collective, were the winners, even though the story seemed to imply that at the end. There's a possibility that things that happened would happen again, and as long as the town never really learned about the structural issues and the toxic masculinity that had been culminated in that town for years on end, nothing's going to change. 

After I have given this book some more thought, I have two answers to this question. 1) The Winners are "the next generation" of Beartown residents, represented by Alicia. The town tried to do better after Maya's rape, but many people remained unchanged. Sometimes it would take a whole generation to shift a community to a better place, and with a promise of Alicia's future, I see her as a representation of hope. 

2) Anyone who found their own "tribe". You would always have someone to back you up no matter what. And people in Beartown who got "accepted" into this close-knitted community are simply the winners. Because without your tribe, you'd be like Matteo, who lose everything. 


  Final Words
: 
Not one book that I read recently has ever provoked me into thinking this much. And while I believed this book was 200 pages too long, I think it's worth every ounce of reading it. The series was such a subtle and clever way for us to see the impact of tribalism and structural violence - how it polarizes us and pushed us into making the decision that drives society into chaos. 

---
14/10/2022 - Initial Review: 

OK, this book gave me conflicting thoughts like, I liked it but not LOVED it? (like I did with Us Against You). It was definitely a more considerate and thoughtful way to close a trilogy but....couldn't it really be 200 pages shorter? It's super slow-paced and extremely repetitive at times. 

I took 15 pages worth of notes so, review to come! 


---
11/10/2022

Update: This emotional rollercoaster is killing me. is.killing.me. !!!! I am reading this NOT ONCE BUT TWICE now because the ebook is for speed, hardcopy is for annotations. Yup. 


---
5/10/2022

Update: I now have an e-book version in my possession. Meanwhile, an internet friend just bought me 
   a signed copy 
 and now it's on its way across the Atlantic to my home. To me. In Thailand. 

brb, I'm screaming to eternity from now on. 


---
THE THIRD BEARTOWN BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOK!!!!!??????!!!!



YESSSSSSSSS



I've been feeling blue for weeks y'all. This book is my reason to stay alive from now on. peace.

The Winners A Novel

Reviews