The Winners by Fredrik Backman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
“It’s a terrible moment for all kids when we realize that our parents can’t protect us. That we won’t be able to protect our own. That the whole world can come and take us whenever it likes.”
I have loved every book Backman has written. I have loved the Beartown series so very much and I wasn’t sure I was prepared to read another book on it and I also wasn’t sure I was prepared for it to end. I loved this small town with its broken and violent and struggling and loving people. I both wanted to swallow this book up in one sitting and also savor every single moment I spent with it.
I wanted to go slowly and yet I couldn’t stop reading it. These characters are all so real, they jump off the page and they pull you into their lives. You fall in love with each of them in unique and inexplicable ways.
“There ought to be a different word for it once you’ve been married for enough years. When you’ve long since passed the point where it stopped feeling like a choice. I no longer choose you every morning, that was a beautiful thing we said on our wedding day, I just can’t imagine life without you now. We aren’t freshly blooming flowers, we’re two trees with intertwined roots, you’ve grown old within me.”
And even though you know the book is going to break your heart, you know it from the first line because Backman tells you, you can’t stop hoping that it won’t happen. You can’t stop falling apart when it does even though he’s warned you again and again. Because you’re so invested in these characters and you’ve grown to love them so very much.
Backman has a way of creating characters that are so flawed and yet still so lovable. He has a way of getting to the heart of what makes us each human and pulling out the essence of his characters. Once you’ve seen their beauty, even in the midst of all the terrible things they do, you can’t help but root for them. Every single character in this book is three dimensional, flawed and broken and also extraordinary. They are showing up to life. Facing it head on. You can’t help but root for even the most irredeemable ones.
“All children are victims of their parents’ childhoods, because all adults try to give their kids what they themselves enjoyed or lacked. In the end everything is either a revolt against the adults we encountered or an attempt to copy them. That’s why someone who hated their own childhood often has greater empathy than someone who loved theirs. Because someone who had a hard time dreamed of other realities, but someone who had it easy can hardly imagine that things could be any different. We take happiness so easily for granted if we’ve had it from the start.”
There’s so much in this book, like all of them. So much about parenting, marriage, community, love, friendship, family. So much heart. I loved every single minute I spent with it. I was worried it would be too many pages and in the end it felt like not nearly enough because these characters will stay with me forever.
with gratitude to atria books and netgalley for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review
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