Bear Town

BearTown by Fredrick Backman is the story about people living in a small town named "BearTown". While the passion for ice hockey drives a lot of them, it is also an abhorrence for the game few others bear. Interesting tidbits about life and people which Backman has put in few lines here and there is something which captivated me. The story is partly about an ice hockey tournament which the bears(thats how the boys refer themselves) are set to play .Backman's description about the characters are so vivid and as close to real.

There are many downsides of living in a small town . Firstly, a sentence becomes a story and spreads faster than a fire in the forest. Secondly, your past is not something that you have left behind instead its like a shadow that is looming large. And third, its like being trapped in a maze because everybody is related to the other and if there is a problem it makes it complicated to pull yourself through.

Below are some quotes from the book which I loved.

“All adults occasionally wonder about another life, one they could be living instead of the one they’ve got. How often they do so probably depends on how happy they are.”🏒

"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."🏒

"All adults have days when we feel completely drained. When we no longer know quite what we spend so much time fighting for, when reality and everyday worries overwhelm us and we wonder how much longer we’re going to be able to carry on. The wonderful thing is that we can all live through far more days like that without breaking than we think.

The terrible thing is that we never know exactly how many."🏒

"Being a parent makes you feel like a blanket that's always too small. No matter how hard you try to cover everyone, there's always someone who is freezing."🏒

Fiction speaks the truth louder than nonfiction and Backman's books reaffirms it.