Final Beartown tome can’t quite find the net

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This article was published 24/10/2022 (1107 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In hockey, as in life, not every shot you take is going to find itself in the back of the net. You’re not going to win every shift you take. But you lace ‘em up and give it your all, regardless.

With The Winners, Swedish author Fredrik Backman wraps up the trilogy that started with the bestseller Beartown and Us Against You. For fans of Backman’s previous work, or the HBO adaptation of Beartown, The Winners may prove to be a satisfying conclusion to the wide range of characters and storylines Backman has drawn out of the northern woods of Sweden. But for those who aren’t invested in the characters, the sprawling tome may just as well fall flat.

Backman, who broke onto the North American scene with A Man Called Ove, is renowned for empathetically interweaving the lives of his characters with a keen eye for detail. However, in The Winners, those lines have a tendency to get lost in the woods as Backman tries to pull so many threads together before tying them off before the final buzzer sounds on the saga of his fictional remote hockey towns.

The action in The Winners kicks off with a major storm which damages the roof of the arena in Hed, Beartown’s archrival. The situation requires the teams from both towns share ice in Beartown’s fancy new rink. Tensions flare, long-simmering resentments boil over. But, like many hockey games, much of the story leading up to and between the highlights involves a lot of stopping and starting, broken plays and turnovers. Time is running out for one or more characters, Backman reminds the reader, over and over again.

“Fom some people involved it will always feel as if almost all the important things happened at once, out of nowhere, within the space of a few hours,” Backman writes. But for all the buildup, Backman has trouble maintaining momentum with so many side stories playing out.

Where Backman excels is in his insight into what makes his characters tick, as well as keen observations and biting criticisms of the structures of power in hockey as well as small-town life.

“Most people aren’t brave enough to live without secrets,” Backman writes on the subject of marriage. “Everyone dreams of being invisible sometimes, no one dreams of being transparent.”

Throughout The Winners, Backman pulls apart the veneer of inclusivity and respectability the Beartown hockey club has painted itself with, following the events of the first book in the trilogy, which sadly rings as true today — with the fallout of Hockey Canada’s recent sexual assault cover-up fresh on many hockey fans’ minds — as it did in 2016. Beyond that, the club, the town and district itself turn out to be involved in a corrupt real-estate scheme, which provides perhaps the most compelling storyline of the novel.

“A few rounded corners become short-cuts, a small loophole becomes grafting, dishonesty becomes criminality,” Backman explains. “The first of these are often not even illegal, just favors and payback, friends helping friends.”

However, Backman also has a tendency to beat the reader over the head with such points, rather than leaving them lying where they may and trusting the reader to pick up on them. And while Backman certainly crafts plenty of compelling characters, sometimes the words coming out of their mouths, or the places they find themselves, seem to be more a function of plot than organic expression of what drives them.

Anyone who watches enough hockey knows that every game isn’t a barnburner, and that even within the most humdrum pre-season tilt, brilliance and glory can be witnessed without warning. Diehard fans will sit through any clunker of a game for the chance at catching those brief moments. But it’s not for everyone.

Sheldon Birnie is a writer, reporter, and beer league hockey player in Winnipeg.