Beartown

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The party at Kevin’s house is filled with drunken teenagers. Maya soon gets drunk with Kevin, and Kevin quietly makes a bet with his friend Lyt that he’ll be able to sleep with the General Manager’s daughter. Maya accompanies Kevin to his bedroom and kisses him, but he rapes her a short time later. Amat, meanwhile, has wandered upstairs in search of Maya; hearing sounds of a struggle from Kevin’s room, he opens the door and sees everything, interrupting the assault. Maya flees the party and later destroys all evidence of the rape. It divides the town into those who think it should be hushed up and forgotten, and those who'll risk the future to see justice done. In the end, the events of the subsequent ten years are sketched out. Maya is a popular guitarist and has a chance encounter with Kevin (who is now married). Maya recognizes Kevin and realizes she can expose him in public but chooses not to. When he leaves shaken, his wife asks him who Maya is, and Kevin tells her the whole truth. An uplifting, life-affirming and often comic tale of how kindness, love and happiness can be found in the most unlikely places Sunday Express Sadly, not everyone survives in this novel of high-stakes competition, and others fall in less deadly, yet still consequential, ways. The game is no less significant in this sequel, and those who remain at the end must solider on as they’ve always done.

As the team is preparing for a match, Amat is scouted and added to the team to give them a better chance of winning. The team wins the match based on Amat's newly indoctrinated skills. That night, Kevin hosts a party in celebration of the win at his parent's home. Many teenagers from Beartown are in attendance, and most of them are indulging in underage drinking and smoking. Kevin meets Maya, and they start kissing, which eventually leads to Kevin raping Maya. Everything and everyone in Beartown is tightly-knit in a web of circumstances that will unfold as the plot ensues. In this little town where barely anything happens, things will surface that will threaten the peace and stability that has existed for a long time. As the news spread of Maya's accusation and the team's loss in the final, many people in the town turn against Maya's family. Kevin's father believes that Maya's accusation is a lie and that Peter, out of jealousy, intentionally reported it the day of the final to cause the team to lose. Kevin's father pushes the sponsors and the council board to fire Peter. He also attempts to bribe Amat into silence by giving his mother a better job, but his mother refuses, telling him to be honest. With the town's future at stake, no one can stand by or stay silent. Everyone is on one side or the other. These new circumstances ignite a spark that burns slowly throughout the novel and builds to an utterly explosive climax, while also weaving in intimate character portraits of the strengths and weaknesses of the townspeople.

BookBrowse Review

Its isolation means that Beartown has been slowly shrinking with each passing year. But now the town is on the verge of an astonishing revival. A bright new future is just around the corner. A new female coach, Elisabeth, gives the team a fighting chance with Benji, who is struggling with being secretly gay, at the helm. Meanwhile, Maya’s best friend, Ana, falls for team player, Vidar, and this relationship has lasting consequences. This book talks about right vs. wrong, violence, justice, community, fears, dreams, culture, integrity, privilege, pressure, prejudices, misjudgment, silence, authority, family, decisions, belonging, winners, losers, hope, loneliness, loyalty, betrayal, forgiveness… I feel a bit late to the party with this one. It was published a few years ago, and all this time I’ve been hearing ravings about it from my friends and fellow book bloggers. It was on my TBR for quite a while and I’ve finally gotten around to reading it a few weeks ago.

Beartown is a remote and isolated town that is both overlooked and forgotten, but the only thing on any of the townspeople’s minds is the semi-finals. I usually prefer books written from a single perspective, but in this case many, many POVs were much needed to fully paint the story. Everyone handles the situation differently. Everyone has to decide for themselves what is truly important to them. Each new perspective changes your own opinion a little bit.

Beartown by Fredrik Backman – Book Details

Maya is distraught after the incident and is unable to keep it to herself any longer. She tells her parents, who are enraged and subsequently proceed to report the incident. Kevin is pulled from an upcoming game last minute, which causes the team to lose the match. Beartown became one of my favorite books of all time. So I knew writing this review is going to be challenging for me – though I wouldn’t mind gushing about it all day long, there are only so many ways you can say “It was amazing.”

In 2022 with the occasion of the launch of Skyshowtime service streaming platform, Showtime gained from HBO over 20 TV series including the Beartown series. A kind of problem play that moves extremely skilfully near the melodramatic without derailing. Its originality is substantial and the book credibly conveys the dual faces of everyday life. An impressive novel, like no other BTJ, Sweden The rape case against Kevin is dropped due to insufficient evidence. Maya continues to suffer distress and decides she must either kill herself or kill Kevin to be relieved of the pain. Late at night, Maya surprises Kevin with a shotgun and forces him to kneel in front of her. Maya thrusts the gun to a whimpering Kevin's forehead and pulls the trigger, but he doesn't die as she intentionally didn't load the gun. Maya reasons that the fear Kevin felt at the moment she pulled the trigger will continue to haunt him for the rest of his life, just as the rape will haunt her. I’m trying to be really careful while reviewing this book. I don’t want to scare off someone who’s trying to avoid deep, sad, heartbreaking tales. I’m also usually trying to avoid books that can make me cry. But I’ve loved this one so much, it would be a real shame if I’d skipped it.Surrounded by impenetrable forests, it recreates the stifling atmosphere of a dying community. This is a mature, compassionate novel. Sunday Times The center of the team is the 17-year-old star, Kevin, coached by David and managed by Peter. Peter is married to Kira (a lawyer), and they have two children, Maya and Leo. Maya is a teen whose best friend is Ana. Amat, whose mother Fatima is a cleaner, is added to the team for his speed. Benji is Kevin’s best friend, and Ramona runs the local pub. These, and even more characters, round out the complex cast. And, through these feelings, a chain of events is set into motion, forever changing Beartown and all of its inhabitants.

Beartown is one of those books that seem pretty easy to describe, yet I feel whatever I say, I won’t be able to draw you a full picture of why you really, really need to read this book. Now, I knew before reading it what the book was all about. And ever since I started reading it, all I could think was – I really, really don’t want it to happen. I’ve grown attached to the characters faster that I could imagine. Knowing what was coming almost made me put down the book. He also uses it very diversely. Sometimes it is just a simple bang bang bang bang bang that sets the atmosphere and means different things to different people. Other times he will say something that sounds quite simple and innocent, then remind you of it later on when certain events give those words a much different meaning. I also loved how the characters were presented in relation to one another. So you often get two very different people coming to the same conclusion, or two very similar people end up being very different in their essences. One evening in late March, a teenager walks into the forest, puts a shotgun to another teenager’s forehead, and pulls the trigger.It divides the town into those who think it should be hushed up and forgotten, and those who'll risk the future to see justice done. At last, it falls to one young man to find the courage to speak the truth that it seems no one else wants to hear. Beartown has its heartbreaking moments, but it is so much more than a sad book. It is filled with so many amazing things, like love, family, loyalty, devotion, warmth, small acts of kindness and so much hope – it can make you laugh and cry at the same time. On the night of the semi-final victory, Kevin's parents are out of town. This gives Kevin the opportunity to host a big party for his team and many other teenagers from the community. At the party, many of the teenagers are drinking and indulging in marijuana use and the team members boast about having sex with the supportive female fans. Maya and Kevin sneak off to an upstairs bedroom to make out. Maya resists Kevin's advances, and he proceeds to rape her. Amat, himself drunk and harboring feelings for Maya, stumbles in to witness the rape. Maya takes advantage of Amat's intrusion to free herself from Kevin.