Review: Beartown

Hockey. This book is about hockey. Did I know that before I read it? No. Why? Because I judged a book by its cover...well technically I judged a book by not only its cover but also by its author. I never read A Man Called Ove even though it topped the bestseller list because quite frankly it sounded sad and I have to be in a particularly loathing mood to read a sad book. However, the book was widely acclaimed for the writing skills of its author, Fredrik Backman, so I thought I would read the current book he came out with. The cover looked peaceful and the title is Beartown so I figured it involved something about the wilderness, perhaps Alaska. I was kind of right, it involved a town in the middle of the wilderness but I managed to miss the hockey player skating in the bottom left corner of the cover.

The book is about a hockey town. Particularly a town that is failing in every aspect of the economy and only has its hockey team to pull them out of the hole. The Junior League hockey team is winning its way to the finals, which if won, means sponsors, new businesses, and money galore for the town.

Sound Interesting? Maybe, but not really to me. I definitely wouldn't have picked up this book if I knew that's what it was about, it all seemed a little too Friday Night Lights for me. Your typical crappy town that only has a sport made up of teenage boys to look forward to. However, I looked up the reviews and they were all extremely high and positive so I forged on.

The book was good in the beginning but I would say the first 100 pages deal strictly with hockey and bumps around to a lot of different characters which was kind of hard to follow at first. You follow the GM of the hockey team, the Junior League hockey coach, the A team hockey coach, the Underdog player, the Star player, the Badboy, the Mom, and the Pretty Girl. I categorized them this way, they actually do have names in the book, but you get the gist. Eight characters is a lot to follow (you're usually taught in writing classes that a reader can only keep up with four) and they all (except for the Underdog) have basic names so it was hard to remember who was Peter and who was David for the first few chapters. Moving along, I didn't hate but also didn't love the beginning of the book because quite honestly I'm a baseball girl and wasn't that into the hockey references.

But then, you get to the heart of the narrative and soon find out this book isn't about an underdog hockey team in a dwindling town finally making it to the "big" game, it's about something far bigger. About halfway through the book you're introduced to a big event ( I wont spoil it) and you realize the author was so damn clever because every single reference he made in the previous pages was a lead up to this event. I loved that because it almost felt like a mystery to me and I felt surprised and a bit dumb that I never saw this event coming.

It's so applicable and such an important message and I immediately became immersed and stayed up until 3am on a Sunday and finished 318 pages in one night. I finally understood where the rave reviews came from people and I got why this book became a bestseller.

Hate can be a deeply stimulating emotion. The world becomes easier to understand and much less terrifying if you divide everything and everyone into friends and enemies, we and they, good and evil. The easiest way to unite a group isn't through love, because love is hard, it makes demands. Hate is simple. So the first thing that happens in a conflict is that we choose a side, because that's easier than trying to hold two thoughts in our heads at the same time. The second thing that happens is that we seek out facts that confirm what we want to believe-- comforting facts, ones that permit life to go on as normal. The third is we dehumanize the enemy.

Trudge through the first 100 pages (unless you love hockey, then you'll love the entire book) because once you make it to a certain climax in the story, it's impossible to put this book down. My review is 4 out of 5 books.

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Review: All The Light We Cannot See (no spoilers)

 I thought it was only right to have my first official book review be on a newer novel that has quickly become one of my all time favorite books.
This novel has truly blown me away. I literally LOL'd in my car listening to the audiobook, cried all over the pages as I read it before bed and just absorbed every bit of it in absolute awe. Every line written by the author, Anthony Doerr, is so melodically enchanting that he was somehow able to make war torn France sound like it still had some sparkle to it. 

To rewind, the book bounces between 1940 and 1944 every so chapters and mainly follows the life of a blind French girl named Marie Laure and the life of a German boy named Werner (although there are some other big characters throughout the book). It's fascinating to read about how two people on complete opposite sides of the war could actually have so much in common. When the war breaks out, Marie Laure is taken away from Paris, the museum her father works in, and everything known as "home" to her and she is placed on the sea of France where she must start anew. Likewise, Werner is a poor orphan destined to work in the mines the remainder of his life, until his intellect and the impending war get him a job with the Nazis working with radio and electronic repair. Both children (and I say children although they are about 16) have to leave behind everything they know and begin again because of World War Two. You see throughout the novel how their paths intersect and the toll the war takes on the both of them.

I don't want to include any spoilers in my reviews because I merely want them to act as an introduction you may decide to read or reject, but I will touch on one of the more powerful moments in the novel.

While at training school to become a Nazi solider, Werner is dragged out of his bunk, along with the other students, in the middle of the freezing winter to observe a prisoner. The book does not specify if the man is a Jewish person, and is only described by Werner as looking "Russian or Polish," but one can quickly infer the prisoner has escaped a concentration camp. Each student lines up and proceeds to take a bucket of water and dump it on the prisoner until he is soon frozen to death. It is such a powerful scene because Werner knows it is incredibly wrong and that he shouldn't do it, but he does it anyway.

When his turn arrives, Werner throws the water like all the others and the splash hits the prisoner in the chest and a perfunctory cheer rises. He joins the cadets waiting to be released. Wet boots, wet cuffs; his hands have become so numb, they do not seem his own.

That last line gives me absolute chills! The nerd in me is overwhelmed by the metaphor between how Werner has lost feeling in his hands and also lost feeling in his soul. But, I will not bore you with a literary review and just conclude that as a writer myself, I was amazed at the way the author was able to weave all the different story lines together and make them cohesive. 


One of my favorite lines from the book, which is often repeated is, “Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever."

It of course relates perfectly not only to Marie Laure on a literal level because she is blind, but to how Werner is so quick to turn a blind eye to the monstrosities he commits with the Nazis. The book is brilliant and I proudly give it 5 out of 5 books.

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