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    Study Guide for Book Clubs: Beartown: Study Guides for Book Clubs, #25
    Study Guide for Book Clubs: Beartown: Study Guides for Book Clubs, #25
    Study Guide for Book Clubs: Beartown: Study Guides for Book Clubs, #25
    Ebook97 pages54 minutes

    Study Guide for Book Clubs: Beartown: Study Guides for Book Clubs, #25

    By Kathryn Cope

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    About this ebook

    Whether you are a member of a book club, or simply reading Beartown for pleasure, this clear and concise guide, written by a specialist in literature, will greatly enhance your reading experience. A comprehensive guide to Fredrik Backman's acclaimed new novel Beartown, this discussion aid includes a wealth of information and resources: useful literary context; an author biography; a plot synopsis; analyses of themes & imagery; character analysis; twenty-four thought-provoking discussion questions; recommended further reading and even a quick quiz. For those in book clubs, this useful companion guide takes the hard work out of preparing for meetings and guarantees productive discussion. For solo readers, it encourages a deeper examination of a multi-layered text.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherKathryn Cope
    Release dateFeb 24, 2018
    ISBN9781386682721
    Study Guide for Book Clubs: Beartown: Study Guides for Book Clubs, #25
    Author

    Kathryn Cope

    Kathryn Cope graduated in English Literature from Manchester University and obtained her master’s degree in contemporary fiction from the University of York. She is the author of Study Guides for Book Clubs and the HarperCollins Offical Book Club Guide series. She lives in the Staffordshire Moorlands with her husband, son and dog.

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      Book preview

      Study Guide for Book Clubs - Kathryn Cope

      Introduction

      There are few things more rewarding than getting together with a group of like-minded people and discussing a good book. Book club meetings, at their best, are vibrant, passionate affairs. Each member will bring along a different perspective and ideally there will be heated debate.

      A surprising number of book club members, however, report that their meetings have been a disappointment. Even though their group loved the particular book they were discussing, they could think of astonishingly little to say about it. Failing to find interesting discussion angles for a book is the single most common reason for book group discussions to fall flat. Most book groups only meet once a month and a lackluster meeting is frustrating for everyone.

      Study Guides for Book Clubs were born out of a passion for reading groups. Packed with information, they take the hard work out of preparing for a meeting and ensure that your book group discussions never run dry. How you choose to use the guides is entirely up to you. The author biography section provides useful background information which may be interesting to share with your group at the beginning of your meeting. The all-important list of discussion questions, which will probably form the core of your meeting, can be found towards the end of this guide. To support your responses to the discussion questions, you may find it helpful to refer to the ‘Style’, ‘Location’, ‘Themes & Motifs’ and ‘Character’ sections.

      A detailed plot synopsis is provided as an aide-memoire if you need to recap on the finer points of the plot. There is also a quick quiz - a fun way to test your knowledge and bring your discussion to a close. Finally, if this was a book that you particularly enjoyed, the guide concludes with a list of books similar in style or subject matter.

      Be warned, this guide contains spoilers. Please do not be tempted to read it before you have read the original novel as plot surprises will be well and truly ruined.

      Kathryn Cope, 2017

      Fredrik Backman

      Fredrik Backman has become one of Sweden’s biggest literary exports. Born in 1981, the father of two began his writing career as a columnist for a Swedish magazine, supplementing his salary by working weekend and night shifts as a forklift truck driver in a food warehouse. He also wrote a popular blog humorously documenting his pet hates. The blog provided the inspiration for his debut novel, A Man Called Ove.

      A Man Called Ove was initially rejected by a number of publishers on the basis that the subject matter was supremely unmarketable. Who, after all, would want to read a book about a grumpy fifty-nine-year-old man who is planning to do away with himself? In 2012, however, a Swedish publishing house saw the novel’s potential and Ove became an overnight success in Sweden. Four years on, the novel had been translated into nearly 40 languages and sold millions of copies across the world, largely thanks to word-of-mouth recommendations from readers. The inevitable film adaptation was nominated for best foreign picture at the Academy Awards.

      Backman followed Ove with the equally quirky My Grandmother Sends Her Regards and Apologises. A novel about intergenerational relationships, it recounts the journey of a seven-year-old girl who is bequeathed the task of delivering apology letters to everyone her late grandmother ever wronged.

      His next novel, Britt-Marie Was Here, again demonstrated that the everyday lives of the over-forties can be spun into bestselling material. Here Backman tells the story of a 63-year-old with OCD who becomes convinced that no one will feel her absence when she dies. On impulse, she leaves her unfaithful husband and moves to a small town where she finds fulfillment coaching an unpromising children’s soccer team.

      Before his most recent novel, Beartown, Backman published a novella - And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer. This is the moving story of an elderly mathematician suffering from dementia, tracing the impact of his cognitive deterioration on his son and grandson.

      The story of an isolated Swedish hockey town Beartown (published as The Scandal in the United Kingdom) was inspired by Backman’s lifelong passion for ice hockey. Another international bestseller, the novel is being adapted for television by the production team who made The Bridge.

      Both Beartown and the preceding novella are unmistakably darker in tone than Backman’s earlier, more whimsical, novels. The writer’s hallmarks are still, however, very much in evidence. In every one of his novels, Backman’s blend of humor and pathos combines to create a compassionate portrayal of the lives of ‘ordinary’ people.  

      Plot Synopsis

      The setting is Beartown: a small Swedish town, surrounded by forest and in economic decline. The story begins in early March on the eve of the crucial semi-final tournament for the Beartown Ice Hockey Club’s junior team. The residents hope that if the team can regain their former glory by getting to the final it will halt Beartown’s decline. Winning the final would very likely lead to the council establishing a hockey school there instead of in the nearby town of Hed. In turn, a hockey school would bring further investment into the town, leading to regeneration and more jobs. Both the town’s pride and its economic survival are at stake.

      Prior to the semi-final the junior team’s coach, David, feels sick with anxiety. Also feeling the weight of the town’s expectations is the club’s General Manager, Peter Andersson. A former NHL hockey star in Canada, Peter has returned to his hometown, dragging his lawyer wife and two children with him, to help resurrect the club’s fortunes. While Peter is in charge of the day-to-day running of the club, the real power lies with those who finance it. The club’s sponsors have made it clear that, if the juniors win the semi-final, Sune (the long-standing coach of the Beartown A-team) is to be replaced by David. Peter has been handed the unpleasant task of breaking the news to Sune, who has been his mentor and friend since he was a child.

      While worrying about the junior team’s lack of speed, Sune spots fifteen-year-old Amat. Amat practices skating in the early hours of the morning while his mother, Fatima, cleans the stadium. Although small, he is incredibly fast on the ice. Sune recommends Amat to David and the junior coach asks Amat to join the team’s training session that day. Amat dreams of he and his mother escaping poverty if he can become a professional hockey player. He is thrilled at the opportunity to join the juniors and idolizes the team captain, Kevin Erdahl. The most talented hockey player Beartown has seen since Peter Andersson, seventeen-year-old Kevin is the town’s golden boy.

      Before the training session, Kevin asks Amat if his friend, Maya, has a boyfriend. Maya is the fifteen-year-old daughter of Peter Andersson and Amat is secretly in love with her. Amat reluctantly admits to Kevin that Maya is single.

      During training, the juniors take every opportunity to knock Amat over. David then asks Amat to go one-to-one against Bobo: one of the biggest boys in the team. Time and time again Bobo knocks Amat over but each time Amat gets to his feet and screams ‘Again’. Bobo advises Amat, who is bloody and battered, to stay down but Amat refuses. Eventually, Amat knocks Bobo to the

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