We meet and follow the town’s hockey star, his best friend who has a deep secret, the boy from the wrong side of the town but incredibly fast on skates, the enigmatic daughter of the hockey club’s general manager, and various other characters who all contribute to the main conflict that drives the plot. But there are a few promising young men whose talents seem to be a lifeline for Beartown, and if they can reach the finals, there’s a chance a hockey academy will be built there, which will then bring back industry and retail, etc.

The teams haven’t been doing well lately, and the town itself is slowly shrinking the factory is downsizing and people are moving away from lack of jobs. If you don’t play hockey, you watch it, so its modest population is obsessed with their junior boys hockey teams and their local standings. Still, it’s an equally impressive book, and I loved the characters which is where Backman truly shines.īeartown is a small hockey town in the far north, so it snows 9-10 months of the year there. I’ve wanted to read it for awhile since I discovered how much I enjoyed Backman’s writing when I reviewed Anxious People last year, which still proves to be one of the most popular reviews on this blog! Based on Anxious People, I assumed this book would be similar, and the writing was, but the tone of Beartown is significantly darker. Beartown by Fredrik Backman is another book I picked up at my local library (curbside that is, apparently Calgary has the highest COVID numbers in the North America at the moment so libraries aren’t open right now).

Beartown book