BOOKS
Humour & healing in The Ones with Purpose
★★★★★ Us Against You Fredrik Backman Penguin, R290
Swedish literature has, to some degree, been done a disservice by the ubiquity of the dark, gritty thrillers (Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series and Henning Mankell’s Kurt Wallander novels chief among them) that have become arguably the country’s prime cultural export.
Fredrik Backman has, to some degree, lightened that gravity with a succession of quirkily charming bestsellers: A Man Called Ove, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry and Britt-Marie Was Here. His focus in those books was on small towns and small groups of connected characters, with the central protagonists being wonderfully layered, riotously hilarious eccentrics whose charms are slowly revealed via the slow removal of strata of sarcasm, grumpiness and apparent narcissism.
Backman’s greatest skill is to expose his creations’ profundity, generosity and wisdom via startlingly beautiful and moving revelations (from his narrator’s perspective or via the characters’ mouths themselves), and in his first three books that helped make intimate personal dramas into emotionally epic experiences.
In Us Against You Backman has widened his scope in every way. Readers are taken to Beartown, a rural town in a forest in Sweden’s frozen north where ice hockey is a religion, a foundation underlying everything from the local economy to marriages.
The list of dramatis personae is longer and more complex than in previous books and, thanks to Backman’s habit of introducing people as “a mother” or “a stranger”, readers may feel their concentration tested. But the writer’s shrewdness is evident and his challenge to readers — to engage with the characters’ souls — is almost overwhelmingly satisfying, should you participate in the empathetic arc Backman creates.
Indeed, it is as early as page two when you are confronted with an assessment of a topic that any reasonable person should feel strongly about. Backman writes: “A boy, the star of the hockey team, raped a girl. And we lost our way. A community is the sum of its choices, and when two of our children said different things, we believed him. Because that was easier, because if the girl was lying our lives could carry on as usual.”
That early marker foreshadows the novel’s capacity to deliver real meaning, even as it entertains. It underlines that the book’s title applies in a multi-faceted way, speaking of the girl and boy in question, of their families and friends, of everyone directly associated with the Beartown hockey club and those on the periphery; of those predisposed to settle their disputes with violence and the would-be peacekeepers who find that burden incredibly heavy, and of the rivalry between the town itself and the bigger, richer settlement of Hed, just up the road.
It’s a framework that allows Backman to interweave multiple narratives, each variously warm, funny, sad and utterly devastating — which he does in a way that continuously compels and delicately erodes cynicism. There are multiple incidents of surreptitious heroism as characters try to mitigate despair (in others or themselves) and to celebrate moments of joy.
Backman’s fiction delves into issues of commitment, sexuality and loyalty; of courage, insecurity and compassion. There is part of Beartown in wherever you are and aspects of your own experiences in the lives of its inhabitants. An extraordinary achievement.