Book Review: The Winners by Fredrik Backman

Or, "woof... I did not know what I was getting into here"

All bookish people–at least the kind who know and enjoy fairly mainstream fiction–know Fredrik Backman. He’s the Swedish author of bestsellers like A Man Called Ove and Anxious People, as well as the author of the Beartown trilogy. A Man Called Ove was even adapted for the big screen starring Tom Hanks (though renamed with an Americanized title).

The Winners is the third and final installment in the Beartown trilogy. I read the first two books, Beartown and Us Against You, several years back, and enjoyed them without considering myself totally blown away. Backman created a stunning setting and complex, ordinary characters with lives just real enough and just extraordinary enough to capture the imagination and build affection in the reader for the small communities of Beartown and Hed in Northern Scandanavia.

Backman really shines in his attention to detail and the powerful way he uses gorgeous language to capture some of the most intimate and universal experiences in friendship, parenting, and marriage. Most of the quotes I jot down from his stories are lines about parenting that resonate so deeply and slice right through my heart. While completely fiction, his stories resound with truth. They ring with equal measures of joy and sorrow.

For example, from The Winners:

“There really ought to be a different word for ‘marriage,’ but perhaps also a different word for ‘divorce.’ One for when you’re only almost there. When you want to whisper that I don’t know what I want, I just don’t want it to be like this. A word for simply saying that I can’t bear it. I can’t bear it if all we’re going to do with each other is just bear it.”

Phew.

Now, The Winners is not for the faint of heart. It’s a stunning book that brings the Beartown trilogy to a heartbreakingly redemptive close, but at 671 pages it is over 200 pages longer than the first two installments in the series. And honestly–the first 450 pages were a bit of a slog. They were beautiful, and I think mostly necessary, but I stand by how I described the book in an Instagram Story: it’s demanding. It’s like Backman wants you to get inside every head and heart of the cast of characters, understanding their complex backgrounds and motivations and relationships. (One benefit is that if it has been several years since you read the first two books, The Winners catches you back up thoroughly.)

However, if you can make it through the first 450 pages, the last 200 absolutely sing. I’ve read a lot of books but I can’t actually remember one that brought me to physical tears. This one did. Hundreds of pages of slow-burning conflict build into a violent climax that, while Backman gives the reader hints about just how bad things will get in the end, stunned me. This story shattered my heart and brought me to tears–the senseless violence, the regret, the unspoken feelings, the forever unrealized potential. The way we never see ourselves quite clearly while others see everything good and true and beautiful in us. The power of chosen family and legacy and how almost nobody is beyond redemption. How the only thing that matters in this life is how we care for one another, and the greatest thing we can ever do is lay down our lives for our friends.

I loved inhabiting the world of Maya and Ana, Benji and Amat, Bobo and Zackell and Sune and Adri, Peter and Kira, Johnny and Hannah and Tess, Ramona and Teemu, Alicia. The Beartown trilogy is absolutely worth a read, as long as you’re prepared to have your heart ripped out. But don’t worry–Backman will stitch it back together in the end, making you a better human in the process.