BEARTOWN BOOK CLUB KIT

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Elfrieda Cook
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1 BEARTOWN BOOK CLUB KIT

2 ABOUT THE NOVEL The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove returns with a dazzling, profound novel about a small town with a big dream and the price required to make it come true. Beartown is a small community on the brink of disappearing into the surrounding forest as the town loses more and more young people and commerce to the larger surrounding towns. But down by the lake stands an old ice rink, home of the junior ice hockey team that is about to compete in the national semi-finals. All the hopes and dreams of this place now rest on the shoulders of a handful of teenage boys. Being responsible for the hopes of an entire town is a heavy burden, and the semi-final match is the catalyst for a violent act that will leave a young girl traumatized and a town in turmoil. Accusations are made and, like ripples on a pond, they travel through all of Beartown, leaving no resident unaffected. TOPICS & QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION Beartown explores the hopes that bring a small community together, the secrets that tear it apart, and the courage it takes for an individual to go against the grain. In this story of a small forest town, Fredrik Backman has found the entire world. 1. What does hockey mean to the people of Beartown? What does winning the semi-final mean for the town s future? 2. The town and the parents of the Beartown junior hockey team place great expectations on the shoulders of seventeen-year-old boys. How does this pressure affect the boys? Have the club s leaders (David, Sune, Peter, and the others) prepared the boys to deal with this pressure? Have the boys parents? 3. How do issues related to social class affect the people of Beartown and the hockey club? Do those who live in the Hollow have a different world view from those who live in the Heights? Does hockey cut through class distinctions or reinforce them? 4. What does Kira s role as a working mother, and her job as a lawyer, mean to her? How does her job affect the way others treat her? Consider this passage from the novel: Not a second has passed since she had children without her feeling like a bad mother. For everything. For not understanding, for being impatient, for not knowing everything, not making better packed lunches, for still wanting more out of life than just being a mother. She hears other women in Beartown sigh behind her back: Yes, but she has a full-time job, you know. Can you imagine? (p. 63). 5. How do Peter and Kira complement each other in their relationship? How does he make up for her weaknesses, and vice versa? Do you think they have a solid marriage? A happy one? 6. Peter loves hockey because it demands his all, his everything. What does hockey demand from each of the characters in the book? What does it take from them? 7. There are many different parents and styles of parenting portrayed in the book. Which parents do you think are the most successful at preparing their children for the real world? Why? 8. Consider this sentiment echoed throughout the book: What is a community? It is the sum total of our choices (p. 312). By this definition, how do the townspeople of Beartown ultimately measure up? What kind of community have they built?

3 9. Several characters must find the courage to go against the grain of the tight-knit Beartown community. What is at stake for each character who does so, and is it worth it for them in the end? 10. Discuss the difference between male and female roles in the small village of Beartown. What is expected of the girls and women vs. the boys and men? Which characters break these expectations, and what are the consequences of doing so? 11. Consider the importance of names and nicknames throughout the novel. How does the lack of first names for Kevin s mother, Kevin s father, David s girlfriend, and Benji s bass player change your impression of them? What effect does calling Maya the young woman have on Maya and her own narrative? How does she start to reclaim her own story? 12. In the course of the novel, we see that playing on a sports team teaches young people values like loyalty, responsibility, and commitment. But we also see instances of exclusion, aggression, and entitlement. Are there certain behaviors that are rewarded in a sports competition but considered inappropriate in daily life? Give examples. Which characters in the book have difficulty navigating this? 13. The events of the novel force the junior boys to grow up quickly as they are faced with very adult realities. What kind of man does Amat become over the course of the book? What do his actions reveal about him? What kind of man does Bobo become? Kevin? Benji? 14. Maya is surprised by how easily she can start to lie to her best friend, Ana, and keep secrets from her. How do each character s secrets affect his or her relationship with loved ones? Consider the secrets between friends (Maya and Ana, Kevin and Benji, Amat and Zach), as well as those between parents and children, and husbands and wives. 15. How does Maya s final act shape her future? How does it shape Kevin s? Do you think a form of justice is achieved? Why or why not? 16. Why do you think Benji chooses to stay in Beartown and play for Sune s A-Team instead of following the others to Hed? Was his choice affected by his relationship with the bass player? 17. At the end of the novel, do you think the tradition of the Beartown Hockey Club ENHANCE YOUR BOOK CLUB continues? Has its fundamental character changed? How do you think it will change going forward? 1. Who would you cast in the movie of Beartown? 2. If you haven t read Fredrik Backman s other novels before, go back and read A Man Called Ove, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She s Sorry, or Britt-Marie Was Here, as well as the novella And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer, and compare the main themes to that of Beartown. Are there any universal themes you notice in all of Backman s books? 3. Watch the classic hockey movie Miracle (2004), which tells the story of the 1980 Miracle on Ice USA Olympic hockey team, with your book club. How does Coach Herb Brooks s coaching style compare to that of Sune and David in Beartown? 4. Follow author Fredrik Backman on Facebook ( and Twitter ( for news about upcoming books, events, and more.

4 A Q&A WITH FREDRIK BACKMAN (courtesy of Goodreads) In Beartown, Fredrik Backman sees the world in a hockey team. It s not just a group of men playing a sport, he says. It s about loyalty. It s about self-worth. It s about the local economy, and politics, and heroes, and human weakness. It all starts with the hockey team, the bestselling author of A Man Called Ove says of his new novel. In the case of Beartown, it s also about the title locale, a small Swedish village where hockey is the dominant subject until a star player is accused of a crime. The book takes on multiple points of view, giving a kaleidoscopic sense of a place that s much deeper than it appears. Fredrik Backman talked with Goodreads Todd Leopold from his home in Stockholm about his inspirations, the challenges of translation, and the effect Ove has had on his life. Goodreads: What inspired Beartown? Fredrik Backman: A lot of things. I ve been around sports my whole life, so first of all it s a novel about the love of sports. At the same time I m trying to tell a story about the darker parts of sports and the darker parts of male groups. If you re valuable to the group, then you have value as an individual. If your value to the group diminishes, then your value as an individual diminishes as well. We re taught from a very young age that if you re good at something, your value as a human being will increase. That thinking is everywhere. So from that came this idea to write this story and try to tell all the best parts of sports that I know, all the things that make me love it, and also ask the difficult questions, the things that are really hard to get a grasp on and try to show that it s complex. GR: Was there a reason you told the story from a multifaceted point of view instead of with one or two protagonists? FB: [Originally] I tried to write it as a TV show. I wrote four episodes and tried talking to TV people, and I got really tired really fast and I didn t want to go to meetings and sit in a conference room, so my agent who knows me really well and my wife really well my agent said to my wife, maybe you should tell him to write it as a novel. GR: Here s a question from [Goodreads user] Jennifer: As a Canadian hockey mom, I found your description of life in the competitive amateur hockey realm fascinating. How much of that did you learn from experience, and how much did you have to research for Beartown? FB: Both. A lot of it comes from experience because I ve played a lot of sports. [But] I never played hockey. I was really fragile as a child, so I could never learn how to skate properly. I kept twisting and breaking my ankles all the time. So I never played hockey. But I played sports for a number of years. So that comes a lot from experience the locker room mentality, the love of a group, the loyalty you feel to your friends on a team. I also did a lot of research. I talked to a lot of people. I sat in a lot of bleachers. I talked to former NHL players. And most of that was just fun for me I had a reason to call people and say, Do you want to talk hockey for two hours?

5 GR: Here s a pair from [Goodreads users] Steve and Chelsea: Steve wonders how the author works with his translator to work together to preserve the same meaning and nuance in the English language. And Chelsea asks, Do you think your Swedish humor translates well into the English versions of your books? FB: I don t work as close with my translator as people might think. There s a feeling for a language that a translator has that the writer often doesn t have. If I sat down with my translator, if I started to nitpick, I would very soon come into problems because if you start doing it, you have to do it consistently, and then you re writing the whole book again. What I do at this point is let the translator do his job. The jokes sometimes can be lost in translation. I use [puns] a lot less because now I know it has to be translated a little bit. But the story remains the same. People ask, Why is Scandinavian literature so popular abroad? I think it s because Scandinavian writers Swedish writers in particular have this tradition of storytelling which is very straightforward and character based. Our language is rich, but it doesn t have a lot of adjectives or synonyms. In English you have a great deal of synonyms for walk. In Swedish there s like two or three that really work. So it s a lot easier to translate something, since it has fewer synonyms and adjectives than the one you re translating to. GR: Who are some of your favorite authors? FB: My biggest hero is Astrid Lindgren, who wrote Pippi Longstocking. She [also] wrote The Brothers Lionheart, which is my favorite book of all time. It s just extraordinary. There s another Swedish writer, Selma Lagerlöf, who was fantastic and one of the first female writers in Sweden to really be recognized. I compare her to Charles Dickens, who s also one of my favorite writers. And then there s a lot of writers I take bits and pieces from. I really like Margaret Atwood, I really like Joyce Carol Oates, and I really like Stephen King. And I like them for different reasons. I like Joyce Carol Oates because she s such a fantastic writer. Margaret Atwood you can pick up any of her books and you know it it s this punch in your chest. And then you have Stephen King, just this fantastic storyteller, who has this production capacity I m really fascinated by. I write fast, and sometimes you get a reaction from people that by default it has to be bad. [But] that s not how creativity works. It s not linear. It can come in bursts. So Stephen King has been important to me for that aspect. GR: How has the success of A Man Called Ove changed your life? Is it intimidating, or did it give you freedom? FB: It s a lot of things. It s been a blessing for me because I can write all day. I don t have to have a real job. That s been fantastic for me because I enjoy being alone. I get the chance to really stay at home with my kids a lot. They re three and six. I might not have had that opportunity if I worked in another field. And then there s other things. There are a lot of expectations as soon as you become this idea of a successful writer. Like, you have to go on tour. You have to meet people and talk to them. Why do you think I became a writer? I probably would have chosen another profession if I was social. When I write, I imagine myself writing for 20 people, and 18 of them like me, and that s my crowd. I want the book to feel like you and I are sitting down at a table, we re having a beer, and I m telling you a story. I don t want the story to feel like I m standing on a stage and I m shouting into a microphone and you re way back and there are 100,000 people. You have to remind yourself that a book is an experience between two people a reader and a writer.

Southfield Public Library. A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman. Discussion questions used at SPL May 9 th and 10 th Discussion Questions

Southfield Public Library. A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman. Discussion questions used at SPL May 9 th and 10 th Discussion Questions A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman Discussion questions used at SPL May 9 th and 10 th 2017 Discussion Questions 1. How does the opening scene, in which Ove attempts to purchase a computer, succinctly