This isn’t the best hockey novel ever written (that title of course goes to BODYCHECK, by Steven Owad, ha), but it’s a close second. A crime in a small, hockey-mad town in Sweden sets the locals on edge and pits the residents against one another. The premise sounds recycled, but this first book in Backman’s wildly successful trilogy delivers on many levels. A hockey ethos runs through the Beartown inhabitants like a potentially fatal current. The related human emotion and folly transcend anything you think you might know about sports.
Backman’s narration in this novel is at times overwrought and a tad cheesy, but a certain emotional truth underpins everything and more than makes up for it. The only real quibble: the almost-flawless English translation repeatedly refers to defensemen as “backs.” Couldn’t they have found a hockey person to go through this before publishing it? I would’ve done it for free.