Fredrik Backman - The Winners

This is a small story about big questions.
It's a story about family, community, life.
It starts with a storm - and a death.
But how does it end?
Two years have passed since the events that no one wants to think about. Everyone has tried to move
on, but there’s something about this place that prevents it. The residents continue to grapple with life’s big questions: What is a family? What is a community? And what, if anything, are we willing to sacrifice in order to protect them?
As the locals of Beartown struggle to overcome the past, great change is on the horizon. Someone is coming home after a long time away. Someone will be laid to rest. Someone will fall in love, someone will try to fix their marriage, and someone will do anything to save their children. Someone will submit to hate, someone will fight, and someone will grab a gun and walk towards the ice rink.
So what are the residents of Beartown willing to sacrifice for their home?
Everything.

Comment: This is the third book in the Beartown trilogy by author Fredrik Backman, a sort of community saga about the lives of the inhabitants of Hed and Beartown, small towns in the north of Sweden, linked by hockey and all the expectations set on the success of its teams, and the intense rivalry between them.

In the first book a despicable event changed the lives of everyone, and in the second book everyone had to deal with the consequences. Now, in this final book, it's time to think about the future and how certain details, apparently unimportant, actually have a much broader impact then people would expect. When a death within the community happens, previous characters, namely Maya and Benji, who left at the end of book #2, return to pay homage but their presence will also have an impact on developing situations. Could it be that more tragedy is on the path of Hed and Beartown or has everyone already learned their lesson?

I will say that in terms of narrative style and emotional content, this book is pretty much in par with the others, with the lives and steps taken by the characters described with detail, which makes the reader able to understand all the nuances. At the same time, the author used a certain technique in these books, where he writes things such as " they didn't know it was the last time they would do it" or "if only they had chosen to do this instead", which means there's some premonition about possible situations and, to make it really dramatic, one can foresee those would be dramatic things.

In the first book this, along with all the emotional baggage and the grayness of all the characters with an important role made me love and cherish the story. In the second book, it was all too much about politics and consequences but it felt as if the story was too disperse... I liked it but less than the first. Sadly, I have to say this was even weaker to me, because all the elements I loved in book #1 seemed to annoy me in this 3rd one, mainly the fact I felt as if there was no cohesion and no purpose in the plot. It felt as if it went nowhere except to create chaos and justify is as human idiosyncrasies or something.

The plot is rather simple, actually, mainly some people come back, others have changed the course of their lives, characters we didn't know existed are now key protagonists and so on, which - and I might be unfair in this but it's just my impression! - makes me think the author might have planned the story to be two books and this third one was a necessity after success, meaning it feels it was not as much a part of the story. Even the second book could have been edited but perhaps the author already planned by then to write this one. 

So, at the end, the plot here went nowhere really special and, unlike what the title suggest, nowhere near positivism nor was it uplifting as I imagined... Life isn't all happy stuff, but I expected the goal would be to present something to look for here, instead of only inferences I might do on my own.

Thinking of this, I also have to mention the fact the whole story seemed to be a little restrictive. I know the idea was to highlight the sometimes incomprehensible notion of rivalry in sports and among people whose lives are defined by boundaries, but this is still set in modern times, could these people in both towns, truly be so blind for everything else except this rivalry? I kind of miss something more, and wish the author could have added more diversity to people's lives, and not base every aspect of everyone's personality on the hockey rivalry.

As one can imagine, a huge part of the story's interest resides on the emotional attachment we have with certain characters. I know it cannot be everyone has happy endings or amazing ones, but I feel divided in my feelings because while I appreciate the author's intentions, I still feel a little annoyed at some of his decisions regarding two or three characters. I really think at some point some editing could have helped at least, but even without it, some things were taken too far and in a way which I didn't see as necessary for that character's arc or to justify its importance in the story.

All things considered, I've found reading this was exciting at first but the more I went, the less intriguing it got and I admit to have skimmed many pages where some characters are dealing with politics and repetitive situations.

Grade: 6/10