The Winners

“Beartown and Hed are old towns in an even older forest. People say that age brings wisdom, but for most of us that really isn’t true, when we get old we’ve just accumulated more experiences, good and bad. The result is more likely to be cynicism and wisdom.”

By describing the age of the towns, the narrator establishes one of the key factors contributing to the rivalry between the two communities. The narrator compares them to people. Because both towns are old and made cynical by that age, they have become stuck in their ways, reinforcing the feud they have long maintained.

“‘Because not everyone always makes it. You have to make the most of the happy endings whenever you get the chance.’”

Hannah’s words to Ana are a warning about the difficulties of life but also a warning to the reader that not everyone gets a happy ending. To Ana, who has already survived significant tragedy, these words are also a balm, reminding her to focus on the positives when she can.

“[Peter] feels sorry for himself about that, he feels sorry for himself a lot of the time these days, but mostly he feels sorry for himself for feeling sorry for himself. It’s a form of internalized hatred that he can’t see an end to.”

Peter’s biggest challenge at the beginning of the novel is understanding where he belongs. His children have aged, his wife has a successful business, and he is no longer connected to the sport that was his passion for most of his life. This loneliness contrasts with his belief that he has had a remarkable life, creating cognitive dissonance when he reflects on who and what he is.

“For several days after the storm Peter will stand in their bedroom trying to knot his tie the perfect length for a funeral. Kira will stand outside the door and never find a breath that’s deep enough to break the silence. The forest lost so many of its most beautiful trees that night, and what makes it even more unbearable is it also lost one of its best people.”

This quote comes before learning that Ramona was the person who passed away, building tension as the reader waits for the reveal. It also encapsulates the difficulties present in Peter and Kira’s marriage as they struggle to enact clear communication strategies. They are each unable to provide comfort to the other or ask for help.

“When we are little we grieve for the person we have lost, but when we’re older we grieve even more for ourselves. [Teemu] wept for her loneliness, but also his own.”

This is a humanizing moment for Teemu has he grapples with Ramona’s death and struggles to accept how life will change. He understands how much Ramona mourned the loss of her husband and shares in that grief while his own is refreshed.

“The proof that time machines will never exist is that if one is ever invented at some point in the future, someone who loved Benji would have used it at once to go back to this precise moment and stop him. […] That’s why we know time machines don’t exist. Because they’re far more plentiful in Beartown than Benji believes, the people who love him.”

This foreshadows both Benji’s acceptance when he returns to Beartown and his death. It also highlights how Benji has a skewed understanding of his place in the world. He believes that he is hated for his sexuality and for leaving the town two years prior, seeing this as a betrayal of his community and reinforcing how deep community alliances run.

“Benji was Kevin’s best friend, and Kevin was the love of Benji’s life.”

This is vital context for understanding the relationship between Kevin and Benji earlier in the trilogy, which shows that Benji also lost something significant in the fallout of Kevin’s crime. It also shows the source of much of Benji’s self-hatred, for he despises his love for Kevin.

“He tries to smile and shrug his shoulders, so slowly and listlessly that they look like badly hung barn doors on old hinges. When they hug again, she’s the adult, he the child.

‘Love me, Pumpkin.’

‘Always, Dad.’”

As Maya has aged, there has been a role reversal with the adults in her life, making it so that sometimes she must be the steady, mature presence in times of strife—a universal experience for many aging children. This moment is also a reference to the first book in the series, when after Maya’s assault she asked that Peter love her when he didn’t know how to help. Love is presented as a powerful, healing force in times of great hurt.

“‘I love that you’re growing up, but I hate you growing up,’ her mother whispers.”

In a tender moment between Hannah and Tess, the book encapsulates one of the biggest difficulties of family: that you grow together specifically for the purpose of one day separating. Tess is changing in ways that are positive and bittersweet, becoming closer to adulthood and no longer relying on her mother for survival. This is just one example of parent-child relationships within the text.

“Summer is long dead, but tonight is when we lose our memory of it, the last light slides away and a sack is pulled over the town. Tomorrow suddenly our fingers won’t remember life without gloves, our ears can’t quite remember the sound of birdsong, and the soles of our feet have forgotten all about puddles that don’t crunch when we step on them.”

Backman repeatedly shows how the wildness and difficulty of nature makes it necessary that the community sticks together so they can survive the long, difficult winters that frequent this part of Sweden. Further, this quote provides an example of Backman’s use of descriptive language to center the reader in a place that may be unfamiliar to them. His use of the word “we” makes it feel like the narrator is also a part of the community and has something to lose from the events of the book.

“That’s why [Matteo] knows that even though [Ruth] might have died in another country, and the police said it was because of the drugs, that isn’t actually true. She was murdered here in Beartown. The people here killed her. Her heart broke into so many splinters they were spread across the whole world.”

Ruth’s decision to leave Beartown ultimately led to her death, a decision that was driven by the different abuses she suffered at the hands of her parents and the local community. This quote highlights not only the impact of her assault, but also the impact of the isolation she was subjected to because of a lack of understanding from her peers. It begins the natural comparison to Maya that is fleshed out later in the novel.

“The two young women trample over the memories and two invisible little girls pad after them. Because they’re always walking behind us: the children we were before the worst that has happened happened.”

Maya and Ana symbolically clear the way for their past selves as they push themselves to move beyond their traumatic experiences and instead focus on the present. This becomes repeated imagery that Backman returns to whenever Maya and Ana grow, making it so that they are haunted by their past selves as much as they are honoring the girls they once were.

“Anna snuggles closer, turns her back to Maya, and whispers: ‘I’m glad you want to sleep with guys again.’”

A quiet moment between Ana and Maya shows the depth of their friendship and the extent to which Maya has been able to heal from the trauma of Kevin’s assault. For the first time, Maya shows romantic interest in another person, a moment that is noticed by both Peter and Ana. The result is a brief return to youth, catharsis that supersedes what the community has suffered.

“Teemu understands exactly what they’re talking about. Over the years he has become extremely good at hearing when someone can’t ask him for precisely what they’re asking him for.”

Rumors have surrounded Teemu and the Pack for most of the book, as it is repeatedly enforced how Teemu has significant power in Beartown but refuses to admit to the fact for his own protection. As such, he navigates gossip in such a way that he converts words into actions, making him a remarkable presence in the rumor mill.

“Amat will remember this evening as the start of something. Bobo as the end of something. For Peter it feels like belonging to something again, for Mumble it feels like belonging to something for the very first time. For Big City it’s like getting a second chance to be a little kid and fall head-over-heels in love with hockey again. How it feels for Benji nobody knows, this is the last time they see him play.”

At the pickup game at the Beartown hockey rink, each of the participants ends the match with a different understanding of themselves and their companions. There is melancholy and joy in their activity, made even sadder by Backman’s use of foreshadowing to denote Benji’s impending death.

“We will say in hindsight that boys like [Matteo] commit their crimes because they want to feel powerful, but that isn’t right, he just wants to stop feeling powerless.”

Matteo’s choice to get a gun and attack the hockey rink is the culmination of years of neglect and abuse. Not only did Matteo watch his sister suffer at the hands of hockey players, but he has survived living in a hyperreligious scenario in which his freedom to feel and express emotions is extremely limited. Matteo wants to kill for vengeance, which provides him with the opportunity to take fate into his own hands rather than be pushed around by others.

“Everyone in Hed has met a bastard from Beartown at a wedding or a hockey game sometime, and everyone in Beartown has met an asshole from Hed in an ice rink or at work. All the worst things we believe about one another can always be proved with a story we’ve heard from someone who heard it from someone else.”

Rumors rarely provide positive information about the people involved in them. Instead, gossip consists of negative ideas, seeking to perpetuate existing stereotypes to benefit the teller of the tale. This is especially true between the two towns, as the rumors lead to violence.

“When we tell this story afterward, it will probably be obvious that it’s a slow chain reaction where everything happens one thing at a time. But for some of the people involved it will always feel as if almost all the important things happened at once, out of nowhere, within the space of a few hours.”

The narrator highlights the connectivity at work between the two communities while also showing how powerful a tool hindsight is. Looking backward provides a chance for reflection that is not available when living in the moment. This reinforces the idea that Everything and Everyone Is Connected and that for every action there is a consequence.

“Kira lets out a short laugh. Lord, grant me the self-confidence of a mother from Hed, she thinks, but deep down she knows she’s just the same. She and Hannah have very little in common, yet somehow still almost everything.”

Kira highlights the hypocrisy of the town feuds while also reconciling a deeply held hurt between two communities. Kira thinks about Hannah in a way that is lightly insulting, but she also acknowledges how she has many of the same behaviors and attitudes that she thinks poorly of when observed in someone from another community. This highlights the similarities between the two towns despite their insistence on the contrary. It also reinforces that Kira and Hannah have enough universal experiences to make them allies, bonded together by motherhood and their statuses in their communities.

“‘I know what my crime was. I looked the other way. I didn’t ask questions. I pretended I couldn’t feel that something was wrong. I didn’t get involved. I…kept quiet.’”

In an important moment of reflection, Peter acknowledges his culpability for the hockey-club fraud to the newspaper editor, describing how while he may have not been the person actively committing the crimes, his intentional ignorance still empowered others to manipulate the system. Peter can identify the ways that his passion betrayed him, an important shift from the beginning of the novel when he mourned hockey because he wanted to be needed as part of the club. In referencing his wrongdoing, Peter highlights the broader culture of silence and neutrality that pervades many sports.

“Amat will look directly into the camera and say: ‘No. I’m from the Hollow.’”

Amat keeps his promise to Benji when he makes it to the NHL, telling people that he comes from the Hollow rather than Beartown. In doing so, Amat shows that he remembers his roots; regardless of his success, he recalls being a poor boy from an impoverished part of town. He honors Benji and his past self, providing hope to the next generation of hockey players.

“[Lev] built up the business at the scrapyard so he could send money to his nieces and their children. One day perhaps he will build a big house here that they can all come and live in. Is he a good man? No. He knows that. He has done many things he ought to regret, but he regrets hardly any of them, and isn’t that the definition of evil? A man can do a lot of bad things to protect his family, might be prepared to defend all he has built up with violence if he built it for their sakes. One day perhaps Lev’s nieces’ own daughters and sons can become lawyers and bosses, he hopes so.”

Lev spends most of the novel depicted as a man who is most concerned with his own interests, a man who is unafraid to manipulate and bully others to get his way. However, the novel’s conclusion shows that he acts the way he does because of his own limited resources and his desire to support his family. His cruelties are also an expression of love, complicating his character. This is also a prime example of how Backman uses point of view to reveal critical information to the reader.

“All our stories are about her, of course. All the ones that end here, all the ones that begin here, she has been the reason for all of them.”

Backman uses the omniscient narration to underscore how important Alicia is and to foreshadow her ultimate status as one of the best hockey players. This is an example of interconnectivity and how tightly people and communities are tied to each other. Alicia only becomes what she becomes because of the things she survived, underscoring the consequences of her childhood experiences.