[ARETE] Review of The Winners

[Duncan Jamieson]

All,
Please find attached and below Rachel Franklin's review of Fredrik
Backman, *The
Winners*
Thanks,
Duncan

Backman, Fredrik. *The Winners*. Trans. by Neil Smith. New York: Atria
Books, 2022. 673 pages. Hardcover, $28.99. E-book available.

Reviewed by Rachel Franklin.

Fredrik Backman’s *The Winners* is the third novel in a three-book series
about the fictional Swedish town, Beartown, in which life revolves around
the ice hockey team and its rivalry with that of the nearby town, Hed.
There is violence (physical and verbal) both inside and outside the rink,
corruption at the club, a devious politician, ambitious journalists, a
young boy seeking revenge, and dreams of ice hockey stardom. Through all
this, the novel comments upon masculinity in sports, the ways in which
sports can exclude and include, and parenthood and mental health. Readers
should not expect a novel which focuses primarily on ice hockey. Whilst it
is central to life in Beartown, detailed depictions of the games or the
statistics are not present here. Rather, it acts as a way of understanding
the characters and the way they see, and interact with, the world.



Readers should not worry if they have not read the previous two books, as
there is enough recapping to understand the various motivations of the
characters. This is one of the strengths of the novel, and one of the ways
in which the novel is structured; the narrative voices want you to
understand, indeed takes it as a condition for your presence as a reader of
the text. “Do you want to understand the people who live in two hockey
towns? Really understand them? Then you need to know the worst that they
are capable of,” (8) the narrator states. Asking questions of the reader is
a common device through all three books in the series, and it has lost none
of its confrontational manner. What makes it an affective mode of address
is that it carries the abrupt, no-nonsense tone of voice that one
associates with Beartown as one continues to read the novel. From almost
the very beginning you are being dragged into the town, and given how the
novel highlights interconnectivity, the way in which everybody’s actions
affect everyone else, it might just inspire a sense of complicity within
the reader.



The novel delves into the thought processes of the characters, often
through a remarkable use of free indirect discourse. This combined with a
continuous third person present narrator gives an immediacy and
contemporaneity to the events of the text. The narrator seems multiple,
often taking on the voices of the characters, but also having an omniscient
voice of someone who belongs to the town and comments upon what the town
people think, feel, and do. The narrator refers to ‘us’, ‘we’, and ‘our’,
acting as the reader’s guide through the fictional town, but how much we
can trust this voice remains questionable, especially given the excessive
levels of sentimentality and obvious fondness they have for the town.



Given the more brutal contents of the novel, the subjectivity of the
narrative voice is one of the novel’s strengths. In the three-book series
there are two rapes depicted in detail, enough detail that I would suggest
a content warning, and in both cases the thoughts, feelings, and actions of
the victims are focused on to a much higher degree than the perpetrators’.
The narrative voice never attempts to be neutral. It draws attention to the
silences, silencings, and euphemisms that are used as silencings, that
often accompany the aftermath of rape. The assaults are always referred to
as rape, apart from when the euphemisms are being critiqued. Both the
multiplicity of the narrative voice and the graphic depictions can make the
novel, and the previous two in the series, a difficult read. They confront
the reader with the interconnectivity of violent sports, narratives and
language of success in sports, and sexual violence.



The only point at which the novel falls down is the aforementioned
sentimentality and romanticisation espoused by the narrative voice, which
is sometimes tiring. Whilst it reflects the sentimental vision of ice
hockey and its players held by the characters within the novel, and is
certainly not out of place in a text which features a sports team, it
sometimes heightens the fictionality of the characters in a detrimental
way. A prime example of this is the character of Benji. Through his
sexuality, much like through the depiction of rape, the novel makes an
up-to-date social commentary on small town life and the values it feels it
needs to defend. In both the verbal and physical violence Benji suffers
through the three books, realism is the main mode of representation. At the
same time, he is referred to as “a boy with sad eyes and a wild heart”
(660) and “the boy in the forest, sad and wild” (661). Combined with the
tragedies that follow him through the novels, this casts him as a gothic
male archetype. This is one of the ways in which the novels demonstrate how
we create fictions about those important to us and those we admire and how
they do not always mesh with reality. Indeed, there is an emphasis upon
‘stories’. Towards the end of *The Winners* it is stated “We have nothing
but stories here” (669). However, whilst the novel handles its realism and
social commentary spectacularly and its comments on ‘stories’ and
fictionality effectively, the sentimentality is heavy-handed and much more
clumsily drawn than other more successful elements of the novel. This
sometimes leads to a sugary fictionality of character.



On the whole, *The Winners* is a fantastic novel which emphasises the ways
in which sports, in this case ice hockey, can intersect with one’s everyday
life and affect the economy and institutions of a town. The characters are
well-drawn, the social commentary is effective in its confrontation, and,
in places, the novel is very funny. It is longer and better paced than the
two previous novels and has more focus and direction than the second in the
series, *Us Against You* (2018). Whilst its sentimentality can sometimes
create a heightened fictionality and a depiction of family that comes
across as a paean, it, and indeed the rest of the series, is a must-read
for anyone interested in the intersection of sport, violence, and
masculinity.
Remember to smell the roses as you recumber past

Duncan R. Jamieson, Ph. D.
Professor of History
Book Review Editor
*AETHLON: The Journal of Sport Literature*
Ashland University
Ashland, OH  44805
USA
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