A few weeks ago, I read Us Against You by Fredrik Backman. This is the sequel to Beartown, which I raved about to you guys earlier this month. In case you couldn’t tell from that post, I absolutely loved, loved, loved Beartown. And I have been dying to get Us Against You out of the library since I finished it. Once I got my hands on it, I plowed right through it in about two days, and that was on top of bar studying. I couldn’t put it down.
And now, finally, I’m passing on my thoughts to you. There won’t be any spoilers for Us Against You in this post, but since Us Against You is a sequel, there may be spoilers for Beartown. I will do my best to keep them to a minimum, but if you haven’t read Beartown yet (and you should go do that right now), you’d be better off checking out that review (over here).
Us Against You picks up right where Beartown left off. Kevin and his family are moving away. Peter has kept his job, for now. Maya is recovering from the trauma of being raped, as much as she can recover from that. But Beartown’s best hockey players have left to join the team in the neighboring town of Hed, and politicians are arguing that the district doesn’t need two hockey teams and they should focus their resources on only one of them. For the people of Beartown, this is taken as a huge threat, because hockey is pretty much the only hope they have as a town. The book really focuses on the growing rivalry between the two towns over pretty much everything, but primarily about hockey.
This was a really good book. The writing was amazing, and there were some really powerful scenes. And I either loved or loved to hate all the characters.
The thing is, for me, the book didn’t have the same power and poignancy as Beartown. I was expecting another slam dunk amazing book. And don’t get me wrong, Us Against You is really great, but it wasn’t Beartown. I’ve been trying to pin down what exactly was missing from this book for the last few weeks, and I’m still not entirely sure why I don’t like it that much (my brain has also been full of contracts and torts, so I’m not at my best for literary analysis right now). The best I’ve come up with is that Us Against You doesn’t feel as focused or pointed as Beartown. Beartown told the story of how the town reacts to Kevin raping Maya, and yes it’s from the whole town’s point of view, but it’s really focused around this single event and its fall-out. Us Against You revolves around the same characters, and some new ones, and many many events as the rivalry between Beartown and Hed builds. As I said, the writing is great, the characters are great, and the feelings are so real, but it felt more scattered than Beartown.
I think another part of my disappointment is that Beartown has such a perfect ending, and I really didn’t need a sequel. And while I was totally willing to stick with these characters and see what happens next, I wanted any sequel to be as amazing as Beartown. A tough act to follow, certainly, and for me, Us Against You didn’t quite measure up.
I want to be one hundred percent clear. I liked Us Against You a lot. It’s a great book. It’s just hard to read it without comparing it to Beartown, and when I compare it to Beartown, I was disappointed. It didn’t add anything to my love of Beartown. In fact, it kind of detracted from my love of Beartown. While I will continue to recommend Beartown to everybody in the world who hasn’t read it yet, but I’m not sure I’d recommend the sequel. For me, Beartown was perfect on its own.