The #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Man Called Ove and Beartown returns with an unforgettable novel “about people–about strength and tribal loyalty and what we unwittingly do when trying to show our boys how to be men” (Jojo Moyes). Have you ever seen a town fall? Ours did. Have you ever seen a town rise? Ours did that, too. A small community tucked deep in the forest, Beartown is …
A small community tucked deep in the forest, Beartown is home to tough, hardworking people who don’t expect life to be easy or fair. No matter how difficult times get, they’ve always been able to take pride in their local ice hockey team. So it’s a cruel blow when they hear that Beartown ice hockey might soon be disbanded. What makes it worse is the obvious satisfaction that all the former Beartown players, who now play for a rival team in the neighboring town of Hed, take in that fact. As the tension mounts between the two adversaries, a newcomer arrives who gives Beartown hockey a surprising new coach and a chance at a comeback.
Soon a team starts to take shape around Amat, the fastest player you’ll ever see; Benji, the intense lone wolf; always dutiful and eager-to-please Bobo; and Vidar, a born-to-be-bad troublemaker. But bringing this team together proves to be a challenge as old bonds are broken, new ones are formed, and the town’s enmity with Hed grows more and more acute.
As the big game approaches, the not-so-innocent pranks and incidents between the communities pile up and their mutual contempt intensifies. By the time the last goal is scored, a resident of Beartown will be dead, and the people of both towns will be forced to wonder if, after everything, the game they love can ever return to something as simple and innocent as a field of ice, two nets, and two teams. Us against you.
Here is a declaration of love for all the big and small, bright and dark stories that give form and color to our communities. With immense compassion and insight, Fredrik Backman–“the Dickens of our age” (Green Valley News)–reveals how loyalty, friendship, and kindness can carry a town through its most challenging days.
more
For me, this book started off very slow, I even wondered if I really wanted to keep listening to it. Am I ever glad I did! Wow! What a great book! Fredrik Backman sure knows how to convey emotions like no other author I’ve read, and this book is packed with emotions! Us Against You is just as good, if not better, than Bear Town, the first novel in this series.
I’m so very glad I listened to this and so very glad I didn’t quit listening when I thought it was not going anywhere in the beginning.
Get your copy today and read it or listen to it!
I enjoy this author. This book is a real tear jerker in that it covers the lives of those who in the previous book were involved in the story of the young girl who was raped. It is pretty reflective of life and the complexity of it.
This is the follow up book to Backman’s “Beartown”. The town of Beartown is still realing for a young girl’s rape. The town divided and picked their side leaving the Beartown hockey team in shambles. The hockey team might be disbanded because it was the coaches daughter who was raped. A lot of former Beartown players leave to play for the rival town of Hed. But a newcomer gives the town hope and soon a new Beartown hockey team is formed. The team forms around former players of the junior team – a gang of misfits who don’t quite fit in anywhere. They have a new coach who is determined to make them a winning team regardless of how that has to be done.
Before the season ends, a resident of Beartown will be dead. Hed and Beartown will be left to decide if hockey is really what is most important. The towns will both be challenged and be given a choice.
This book was not very good. I was disappointed because Backman is one of my favorite authors. I love almost everything is writes, but this one was just not well written. First, it is extemely melencholy. There is never an upswing for any of the characters – which makes the story just drag. I mean – really? Nothing but sadness? One reviewing on Amazon said it best “It was like a swirling snowstorm that was brewing for too long”. Nother ever really happened. Each chapter would leave you with cliff hangers and often he would say “they would remember this day”. But then….what? Nothing of great importance. He did too much setting up and then things would work out fine. There was too much of that.
I don’t recommend this book. And the rumor is that there will be a third. I honestly think he should have just left Beartown alone and not tried to continue the story. Because it really has no where else to go.
After reading Beartown and getting a mini epilogue, i didn’t think i needed this book. I didn’t think I needed anything else wrapped up in my mind, but obviously I was wrong. These books are written in the perspective of the town, not just two or three people, but the town as a whole. A town focused on ice hockey. A town that is much like any town, with secrets and politics and lies. This duet was amazingly written and was worth every second of reading.
Slow moving. Seems to rehash Beartown
I did not enjoy this as much as Beartown, but still good read and wonderful characters. Shows how anger can drive people to do things they never thought they could and how one act of kindness can make all the difference.
I love reading everything by this author! Great sequel to Beartown.
I love this author! His character depictions are so real that I feel like I know each of them. Great story…a sewuel to another amazing book…Beartown!
Second book in the Bearskin Series. In a small isolated town hockey is god, the players entitled and can do no wrong. On the night of a team victory the fact that a girl accompanies her childhood friend upstairs to his bedroom is taken in the court of public opinion as implied consent for the rape that follows. Near the end of Book 1 the girl ambushes the boy on the school running track holding her friend’s father’s shotgun to his head while he loses control of his bodily functions and soils himself.
The team and the town are torn apart and at the start of book 2 the boy is leaving home with his mother while the divorced father goes his separate way. The locale is Scandinavia but it could be any football, basketball, baseball, rodeo town in America.
This story begins with a heavy dose of moralizing and sociological philosophizing. The sarcastic assessment of local politics continues as the story progresses. If it’s going our way it’s cooperation, if it isn’t it’s corruption.
When teenagers have sex the boy proves his manhood, the girl is deflowered. Jurisdictions make abortions difficult or impossible for teenage girls but society looks down on unwed mothers and calls their offspring bastards.
Hockey is a simple game really, two teams with sticks, one puck and a goal at each end; it’s when you throw in human emotions and politics it gets complicated. Take the player who took a dump on the general manager’s desk.
The author continues throughout with his insights and drops many one-liner foreshadowings. With only a break between paragraphs he jumps from one grouping to another switching back and forth several times within one chapter. In other words this is a book that makes great demands of its reader. Nor does it ever decide whether it’s a study in social-psychology or hockey story. We never do learn who won the second hockey game.
This book is, at its core, all about loyalty. I loved it.
I’ve read just about everything Backman has put out. This, I believe, is my favorite. Us Against You is a little more plot driven than previous books, but does NOT lack on amazing character development, charming & witty dialogue, and one-liners that will hit you in the gut and/or heart.
The book follows the aftermath of the tragedy that was brought upon Beartown, so you must of course read Beartown before it’s sequel. Both are about a small, rural town divided by class and hockey. The book examines gender, sexuality, and class issues. Both are heartwarming and heart destroying books that I recommend to anyone who will listen.
Excellent sequel to Beartown.
Characters are well developed & tend to pull reader into the plot.
This book is a follow on to Beartown, reprising many of the same characters but also introducing some notable new ones. What I love about both these books is how Fredrik Backman gets us invested in the characters even when they come across as being slightly unsavoury or very quirky or simply outside our realm of experience. There are many twists and turns but he manages to thread all the stories together to achieve a satisfying whole without the ending being too neat. There are definitely some loose ends. I also like the way Beartown is a character in its own right; the story would not be the same if it were set anywhere else. Beartown exerts such an influence on the people who live there. In my opinion, Mr Backman’s writing style is pretty unassuming but it is all the more powerful for that as there is no flowery prose or overblown sentimentality; the characters speak their minds and the reader is left to form their own opinion whilst being carried along by the force of the story itself. There is love and sorrow, joy and despair, loyalty and betrayal, comedy and tragedy. I loved it!
Backman keeps writing original stories. This was his most powerful yet. Though set in the context of ice hockey, it has wider repercussions for real life. His characters are complex and believable. This book was so intense I had to put it down and walk away at times but was definitely worth reading. Great book.
Please read Beartown first. Then go straight to Us Against You. Unforgettable books.
This follows BEARTOWN characters after the town crisis. I read this late into the night. Very, very thought provoking.
My current favorite author. I have loved everything by Fredrik Backman.
Us against you. Fredrick Backman. Continues Bear Town story of rival small town hockey teams.
This book is the sequel to “Beartown”. Residents of Beartown and Hed need to get along with each other. That’s hard because they are bitter rivals when their hockey teams play each other. They live for hockey. Players and parents have hard and soft places in their beings. Story is sad and yet inspiring. I didn’t want to put it down.
A moving, wonderful story. Highly recommend.