Us Against You by Fredrik Backman

 

Title:  Us Against You

Author:  Fredrik Backman

Narrated by:  Marin Ireland

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio

Length: Approximately 14 hours and 17 minutes

Source:  Purchased from Audible.com

What series are you currently reading?

Beartown had a transformational year and change in continuing when they find out that their hockey team is going to be disbanded.  A local politician pulls strings to keep the team in place with a surprising new coach. With much of the team now a part of their rival team, Hed, how will they build back the Beartown team?  How can they work through the trauma of the last year?

My thoughts on this novel:

·       I read Us Against You for the February Pick for the Rogue Book Club. We are going to discuss it in March as there was not enough time for everyone to get the book and read it before our book club meeting.

·       This is the second book in the Beartown series.  We all loved Beartown, and it was a previous book club pick.  We decided to keep reading this series as a book club.

·       Sports mean so much to a small town.  When you try to take away sports, you can cause violence.

·       Sadly, the girl or victim is often blamed for a rape. A rape occurred in Beartown and Us Against You continues the story and shows that while it was a one-time act of violence, it will forever impact the life of the victim.

·       There was a line in the book about how someday there will not be female hockey coaches, there will just be coaches. This really spoke to me.

·       I loved being immersed in this town and in the lives of these characters again.

·       There is a good refresher at the start of the book to remind you about the first book.  You could potentially read this as a standalone, but I highly recommend reading Beartown first.  They are both excellent reads.

·       I liked the nice short chapters.

·       The twist in the book was heartbreaking, but I don’t want to spoil it up for others.  It was very emotional, and I teared up.

·       I like how Backman sets up what will happen in a book with a question or foreshadowing at the start.

·       Fredrik Backman is one of the best authors out there today.  He is able to capture how it feels to be human at any age.  He fully captures the complexity of humanity.

·       One such moment was when a dad pondered on how he didn’t have time to play with the kids when they were small and now that they are teens, they want nothing to do with him.  How did this time pass away?

·       Another such moment was when a teen told her Mom that she had been a great role model to her.

·       Marin Ireland is a great audiobook narrator, and I fully enjoyed this audiobook.

·       I am really looking forward to reading the next book in the series, The Winners.

Favorite Quotes:

“Have you ever seen a town fall? Ours did. We’ll end up saying that violence came to Beartown this summer, but that will be a lie; the violence was already here. Because sometimes hating one another is so easy that it seems incomprehensible that we ever do anything else.”

“You try to be a good parent, in every way, but you never know how. It's not a difficult job. Just impossible.”

“Love and hate. Joy and sorrow. Anger and forgiveness. Sports carry the promise that we can have everything tonight. Only sports can do that.”

"Fathers need to seize the day, because childhoods are like soap bubbles; you get only a few seconds to enjoy them.”

"The complicated thing about good and bad people alike is that most of us can be both at the same time.”

"It's hard to care about people. Exhausting, in fact, because empathy is a complicated thing. It requires us to accept that everyone else's lives are also going on the whole time.”

Us Against You by Fredrik Backman is a story about a town that loves sports, but beyond the rivalries it shows empathy and what it means to be human.  The humor and drama in this novel are top notch.  I highly recommend this series and any book by Fredrik Backman. 

My Friends by Fredrik Backman

 

Title:  My Friends

Author:  Fredrik Backman

Narrated by:  Marin Ireland

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio

Length: Approximately 13 hours and 22 minutes

Source: Review copy from Simon Audio.  Thank-you!

What is your favorite book featuring friendship?

Louisa is a young orphan and artist with a goal to see one of the most famous paintings in the world, “Of the Sea.”  Many people didn’t notice that there are three kids on a pier in the painting.  After finally getting to see it on display, Louisa meets a man she assumes to be homeless in an alley, but who is the dying artist.  This sets Louisa on the path of learning about how the painting came to be and about the friends on the pier.  Will Louisa finally find “her people?”

My thoughts on this novel:

·       My Friends by Fredrik Backman is one of my favorite reads of 2025.

·       I love Fredrik Backman’s humor and talk about the hard things in life such as child abuse, death from cancer, abandonment, etc.

·       Backman has a way of completing capturing childhood and how much friendships mean to us.

·       The beauty and wonder of art are also themes.

·       Another important theme is how kindness can help others to value themselves.

·       Louisa’s best friend Fish has committed suicide, and she is trying to deal with that as well as finding a pathway out of the foster system.

·       Part of the story is a travel story where two characters travel together, Ted and Louisa, and have an adventure.  Ted tells Louisa stories of the past and the artist as a child.

·       I loved Ted and Louisa’s dynamic together.

·       Marin Ireland is a great audiobook narrator that kept me intrigued.

·       This was a coming-of-age story.

·       The kids in the story from the past were all from the poor side of town and around the age of fourteen.

·       The mystery kept me intrigued.  How get the artist get the paint for his famous picture as a poor fourteen-year-old?  How did he become famous?  What death or event is foreshadowed that takes these kids over the divide from childhood to adulthood? 

·       My Friends is a beautiful story.  It’s hard to explain the beauty of the story as Backman is such a unique and wonderful writer who really writes about the truths of life.

Overall, My Friends by Fredrik Backman is one of the best books of this year.  It’s a beautiful, unique, and ultimately uplifting story about friendship and life.  I highly recommend it.

 

Beartown by Fredrik Backman

 

Title:  Beartown

Author:  Fredrik Backman

Narrated by:  Marin Ireland

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio

Length: Approximately 13 hours and 11 minutes

Source: Audiobook from Amazon Music monthly allotment.

What is the best book you’ve read for a book club pick this year?  Beartown by Fredrick Backman was the March pick for the Rogue Book club.

Beartown is a small dying town located far to the north in Sweden.  They are hoping for a comeback for their town if their junior league hockey team wins the national semifinals and championship.  After an assault occurs between a hockey player and the general manager’s daughter,  the town grapples with the repercussions.  Who should be believed and what is most important in such times?

My thoughts on this novel:

·       This novel had great character development.  I feel like I really like to know the characters and the town.

·       The story had a slow build as Backman got the reader to know the characters and town before the action of the story really happened.

·       It made the reader ponder the frailty of human beings.  What is truth?  Do you want to believe the truth that will further yourself and your “team?”  Or what actually happened?

·       The town’s obsession with hockey was relatable living in a small town with a football obsession and having attended a northern college with a hockey obsession.

·       I mostly kept thinking in this book that teenagers can be real a##holes.  Backman captures this perfectly.

·       It was also a good look at family life.  While some people don’t have much, they do have the love of their family.  Kevin is a hockey star, but lives in a cold family.  They have wealth, but don’t even attend Kevin’s games.  I felt for Kevin.  He could have been written as a purely evil character, but there was a lot going on in his life.  He made poor choices.

·       The novel was a good look at community life and life in a small town as well. 

·       We had a good mini discussion of this book at book club, but we want to discuss it more in depth at our next meeting when everyone has had a chance to read it.

·       This was the first book of a trilogy and I really want to read the rest!  I enjoyed the characters and I want to see what else life has in store for them.

Overall, Fredrick Backman has a gift of writing unforgettable novels that leave you thinking about them long after you finish the last page.  Beartown was another great novel with great characters, and I am happy this is a series so I can read more set in this world.  My one sadness is – why can’t I watch the HBO mini-series?  I can’t find it anywhere!

A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman

 

Title:  A Man Called Ove

Author: Fredrik Backman

Read by:  J.K. Simmons

Publisher: Simon & Shuster Audio

Length: Approximately 9 hours and 13 minutes

Source: Review Copy from Simon & Shuster Audio.  Thank-you! 

 A Man Called Ove has been on my radar for a few years now with so many good reviews posted everywhere.  I have read My Grandmother Tells Me to Tell You She’s Sorry and Anxious People also by Fredrik Backman and have really enjoyed them.  I was happy that A Man Called Ove was selected as the January book for the Rogue (FLICKS) Book club.  I chose to listen to it on a review audiobook copy I had received from Simon & Schuster.  I finished it just in the time – the morning of our meeting!  It was a great book to discuss.

 Ove is a grumpy old man living in Sweden.  Everything seems to make him grumpy, especially if it’s someone breaking the rules.  He has recently been let go from his job and his beloved wife has died.  He thinks he has nothing to live for, but after new neighbors move in, he finds himself constantly busy helping them out with their problems.  Will he find he has something to live for after all?

 A Man Called Ove starts out in a dark place and Ove does seem rather grumpy, but as his story unfolds, you learn there is much more to Ove than meets the eye.  He learns that there is still a lot of good he can do in the world, and he learns to love people that are different than him.  It is a unique story, and the ending brought a tear to my eye.  I enjoyed this book immensely. I watched the Swedish movie on Amazon Prime with my family and we all loved it.  It followed the novel rather well.  The humor was fun as well as the story of not judging someone before you get to know them.  My family also really loved Ove’s cat.

 J.K. Simmons is the narrator of this audiobook and he did an excellent job.  He was the voice of Ove to me.

 Favorite Quote:

“Death is a strange thing.  People live their whole lives as if it does not exist, and yet it’s one of the great motivations for living.”

 Overall, A Man Called Ove is a moving and unique story.  I loved it.

Anxious People by Fredrik Backman

 

Title:  Anxious People

Author: Fredrik Backman

Read by:  Marin Ireland

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio

Length: Approximately 9 hours and 53 minutes

Source: Review Copy from Simon & Schuster Audio.  Thank-you!

 

Anxious People is one of my favorite books yet this year.  It’s a beautifully crafted novel with a unique storyline.  It’s a great character study into a motley crew of people.

 The basic premise is that Anxious People is a closed room mystery.  A bank robber tried to rob a “cashless” bank and fled from the scene of the crime to an apartment building across the street.  The bank robber ended up in a viewing for an apartment for sale and suddenly the six attendees and the real estate agent have become hostages.  Or as the bank robber often says, they become, “the worst hostages ever.”  Jim and Jack are a father and son police team in this small city in Sweden and work to help the hostages.  When the bank robber disappears after the hostages are freed, they work together to solve the mystery.  Where could the bank robber have gone?

 Anxious People is a mystery, it’s laugh out loud funny at times, and it’s also sad.  It really looks at what it means to be human.  What it is to love and how we are all working toward trying to keep things together in our worlds.  It also looks at the impact of one man’s suicide from a bridge ten years ago on the community.  It’s a great character study into the hostages, police officers, and the bank robber.  I loved how well written the story was.  Just when you thought you knew a character; Backman would turn the table on you, and they were nothing like you assumed.  It was a great look into how you shouldn’t make assumptions about people.   It was a very unique story and very enjoyable.

 Marin Ireland is an excellent narrator.  She had a different distinct voice for each character, which I greatly enjoyed.

 Favorite Quotes:

“They say that a person’s personality is the sum of their experiences. But that isn’t true, at least not entirely, because if our past was all that defined us, we’d never be able to put up with ourselves. We need to be allowed to convince ourselves that we’re more than the mistakes we made yesterday. That we are all of our next choices, too, all of our tomorrows.”

 “That's the power of literature, you know, it can act like little love letters between two people who can only explain their feelings by pointing at other people's.”

 “Some of us never manage to get the chaos under control, so our lives simply carry on, the world spinning through space at two million miles an hour while we bounce about on its surface like so many lost socks.”

 “Nothing is easier for people who never do anything themselves than to criticize someone who actually makes an effort.”

 Overall, Anxious People is one of the best books I’ve read this year.  It is a great look into what it means to be human.

Things My Son Needs to Know About the World by Fredrik Backman

Title: Things My Son Needs to Know About the World

Author: Fredrik Backman

Read by:  Santino Fontana

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Length: Approximately 3 hours and 10 minutes

Source: Review Copy from Simon & Schuster.  Thank-you!

Fredrik Backman, author of such novel’s as A Man Called Ove and My Grandmother Tells Me to Tell You She’s Sorry, has put together a sort collection of essays on things he would like his so to know about the world.  The book was an often-hilarious look into life as a father.

I enjoyed that Backman must be around my age so I loved all of his cultural references.  As a parent myself, I found myself laughing and nodding along with his musings.  I liked the insight into his life.  Even though Backman is a famous author, his life seems very low key and familiar. I also sensed the love he has for his wife and his son.

I’ll admit that I was annoyed when the book went into a detailed monologue about pro wrestling which I cared nothing for.  The book bounced around at times.  It seemed pretty random.  I was amused by different segments, but a lot of other segments seemed to be complaints about his son or how hard it is to be a father/husband.  That didn’t seem like “Things My Son Needs to Know About the World.”

Santino Fontana was a good narrator of the audiobook and this short audiobook didn’t take long to listen to on my daily commute.

Overall, Things My Son Needs to Know About the World has some funny moments, but overall it was an inconsistent collection of vignettes about fatherhood.