Book Blog #321: Us Against You by Fredrik Backman

 

Title: Us Against You

Author: Fredrik Backman

# of Pages: 697 (large print)

Genre: Adult, Fiction, Contemporary 

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Synopsis: After everything that the citizens of Beartown have gone through, they are struck yet another blow when they hear that their beloved local hockey team will soon be disbanded. What makes it worse is the obvious satisfaction that all the former Beartown players, who now play for a rival team in Hed, take in that fact. Amidst the mounting tension between the two rivals, a surprising newcomer is handpicked to be Beartown’s new hockey coach. Soon a new team starts to take shape around Amat, the fastest player you’ll ever see; Benji, the intense lone wolf; and Vidar, a born-to-be-bad troublemaker. But bringing this team together proves to be a challenge as old bonds are broken, new ones are formed, and the enmity with Hed grows more and more acute. As the big match approaches, the not-so-innocent pranks and incidents between the communities pile up and their mutual contempt grows deeper. By the time the last game is finally played, a resident of Beartown will be dead, and the people of both towns will be forced to wonder if, after all they’ve been through, the game they love can ever return to something simple and innocent.

Review: Despite Backman's long-winded writing style, I'm somehow still hooked into his books. 

Since I liked Beartown so much, I knew I would at least halfway like the sequel. That turned out to be true - it's been a while since I felt the desire to read the sequel in the a series, and I was happy to hear more about the characters I was cheering for in the first book. 

That being said, I can't give this book 4 stars for a couple of reasons:

1. Unlike Beartown, Us Against You doesn't have a strong focus. 

I've always had issues with POV switching, but the third person POV switching worked in Beartown. In the sequel, it suffers from the usual issues I usually see - too many parallel stories that are not weaved close enough together. Since there's already so many characters to care about, their lives are inevitably going to diverge from each other, which makes the reader wonder what we are trying to read about in the first place. 

I would rather have Backman try to slim down the updates on different character to favor a strong story line. Beartown had a strong story line from building a plot around a hockey game timeline and rape that are more evenly spread across the entire book. The same can't be said for the sequel - the hockey games are more of an after thought and are not a strong enough device to frame the progression of the plot. 

Instead, Backman adds some new characters. to name a couple: Vidar, who never  got enough time in the spotlight to develop his reputation as a "troublemaker" in the readers eyes, and Richard Theo, who's character's only purpose is demonstrate the political "games" politicians play with the lives of the people they are supposed to serve. These new characters paired with Kira, who battles with balancing her obligations to her family and her career, and Maya, who's interests are always tangential to the ongoing hockey focused events, make the story seem like one jumble of lives between which Backman haphazardly bouncing the narrative.

Backman also cranked up the "deep and meaningful" messaging in this one. I liked the balance he had in Beartown - focusing on a more neutral topic of what sports can mean to different people and then delving into the deeper topic of how people react to rape, what it means for the victim and their loved ones, etc.  In this one, Backman tries to tackle the influence of politicians, gender inequality (particularly the struggle of women living in a man's world), and homophobia.  It reminded me of Grey's Anatomy - a little too forced, a little too obvious to land the same impact as similar messaging that is better blended in to a (better) plot.

2. By the end of the book, it doesn't feel like anything actually HAPPENED.

Yes, of course something happened, but did it warrant a whole book written about it? This was more of a tragic slice of life that didn't particularly bring us anywhere. Without any major spoilers, I'll say that I would have felt about the same as if I didn't read this book. One aspect that Backman did well was giving Benji a lot more time for his character to shine through, and my love for this character has only grown since the first book. 

But as far as everyone else, there's not much that happened to them that made me feel like this was a book that well-deserved a read. From reading the synopsis of the third book, it sounds like it will be more of the same, so I probably won't be reading the last book in the series.