Book Club Discussion: The Winners by Backman

[ufcasey]

It's the last book club discussion of 2022! 
Here are some questions, but like usual feel free to answer any/all/none of them, and/or just give your general impressions/opinions of the book.

1. Fredrik Backman chose to write about two towns obsessed with hockey and the drama that comes from their passionate feelings about the game. Are there other kinds of activities besides sports that can inspire such strong feeling of connection and personal identification in a community? If you aren’t a hockey fan, did the book still speak to you?

2. Backman writes “’Marriage.’ There ought to be a different word for it once you’ve been married for enough years. When you’ve long since passed the point where it stopped feeling like a choice.” (pg. 317) What do you think Fredrik Backman means? Do you agree with this statement?

3. Kira’s psychologist asks her to choose if she’d rather be important or loved, and Kira refuses to answer. What do you think the real answer for Kira would be? How would you answer the question for the other characters? Yourself?

[travella]

I'm not a hockey fan and I still loved this series. I grew up in a small rural town with a rival neighbor sports team so I understood the sports tension between the towns, but I also felt like the tension and hate for the the other town's team and people in general was overdone in the book. When towns are that close, small, and rural there is a small degree of separation between everyone - work together, do business with each other, go to church together, relatives, etc. From my experience there is evident rivalry, but it is left at the game.

I loved the ending. I found the scene with Anna and her dad at the ice rink powerful. I didn't like her dad the entire series then he had me in tears at the very end. I'm sad that the Beartown series is over, but I definitely look forward to more books written by Backman.

[krystee]

I don’t have any feelings about hockey at all, but I LOVED these books.

When he wrote about the loss of Kira’s and Peter’s baby son, I cried like I have never cried before in a book.

There is something about the way he writes that just rings so true and deep for me. It seems like people either LOVE his books or don’t really get them/care for them and no in between (at least among the small sample of my friends!), and I am definitely a LOVE.

My friend lives in a tiny town that basically shuts down for high school football games and the whole town comes together. It doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor, Democrat or Republican, black or white….all the differences go away and everyone unites behind that team and puts their passion and hopes into it. To me, high school football is a dangerous game played by kids. To them, is a symbol of promise and hope and pride. I saw a lot of that little town in these books.

[ufcasey]

This series is one of my all time favorite series! I feel like each book has so many layers with so many characters that are all fully developed. Living in Florida, I know nothing and care nothing about hockey but that didn't impact my love for this series at all.

What I really thought was great about this book was how the motivations behind the shooting wasn't just some inexcusable "bad guy" reason. There was a reason, whether or not you agreed with it. And that reason tied back to the same kind of situation that happened in book 1 - a sexual assault that went unpunished by the perpetrator. This book series covers so many different topics: sexual assault, putting your loyalty to a group over justice for crimes perpetrated by members of that group, alcoholism, child loss, professional athletes whose careers end early due to injury, amateur athletes who don't reach the professional level despite their talent, homosexuality in place where it's not easily accepted, rivalry between teams and towns, governmental bureaucracy, women who push aside their professional goals to support their spouse and vice versa.... the list goes on. It manages to do all these things without being too trite or simplistic or preachy in my opinion.

The only negative I had for this book was there was a lot of 'foreshadowing' passages throughout, like this:
"...because then everything that is going to happen would never have happened. If only someone had appeared now and stopped him from going home."
It got kind of irritating after a while. But that's a small issue.

[rootbeerfloat]

Chiming in a few months late...

Jan 3, 2023 12:53:18 GMT -5 ufcasey said:

The only negative I had for this book was there was a lot of 'foreshadowing' passages throughout, like this:
"...because then everything that is going to happen would never have happened. If only someone had appeared now and stopped him from going home."
It got kind of irritating after a while. But that's a small issue.

Yes, this bothered me, especially all the hints that a beloved character would die. It was sad enough. I didn't need to be sad prematurely.

I also thought it took a long time to introduce new characters (some, like the newspaper editor and her dad, weren't necessary to me at all), though I did eventually appreciate the parallels and connections with the original characters.

Those are minor complaints. I loved this series. I agree that Backman gets people and what motivates human behavior. Although my favorite characters are the young adults, Peter and Kira's marriage/parenting resonates (sometimes too much lol).