Beartown by Frederik Backman

My book club reads books in translation in May. This was our pick this year. It was originally published in Swedish. It is also the basis for the HBO series of the same name.

The book tells the story of a small rural town in Sweden called Beartown. It is known for only one thing: hockey. The town is small and in the forest. No one goes there by mistake and lots of folks look to get out. One man who made it big in hockey moves back with his family after a brief career in the NHL, becoming the general manager of the local club. The town revolves around this club. Everyone is involved in some way: player, spectator, sponsor. The junior team is on the verge of making the finals for the first time in decades. But something happens after the semi-final that sets the town at odds with itself.

This book is exactly the kind of fiction I love to read. It deals with fundamental aspects of what if means to be human and be in relationship with others. What do we owe one another? What do we owe to ourselves? How do manage both at the same time? There are deep and meaningful relationships of all sorts: player-coach, couples, father-son, mother-daughter, neighbors. All of them are real and complicated with no easy answers. And the writing is so compelling and compassionate. I highly recommend this book.

My rating: 5/5

Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa, Translated by Eric Ozawa

Once again, I was on the road for a soccer tournament. And once again, I was on the hunt for an audiobook to listen to during my drive. I dug into my list of novellas and came up with this one. It is has been on my list so long now, I have no record or recollection of why I added it.

A young woman’s boyfriend casually mentions that he is getting married… to someone else. The young girl is so devastated and embarrassed, that she quits her job where she works with her ex. Shortly after that, her uncle invites her to live in a small room over his used bookshop in Tokyo. Having nowhere else to go, she accepts. Naturally, her experience there and the space she has from her past mistakes gives her the room to grow.

As an American, there was a lot that I struggled to relate to. The main character feels a little too naive. But perhaps that is cultural. It certainly wasn’t enough to ruin a wonderful story. Between books and the love of her family, she starts to overcome her past. She also learns about her uncle’s past and their relationship grows. This is a sweet and relatable coming of age story set in another culture.

My rating: 4/5

Orbital by Samantha Harvey

I learned about this book through Locus Magazine. In February, they had their reviewers list their best books of the year. Archita Mittra included Orbital in her list. On one of my regular road trips to referee a soccer tournament, I listened to this winner of the 2024 Booker Prize.

The book covers a day in the life of four astronauts and two cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station. Each chapter is titled according to each of the sixteen orbits taken in a single day. Not a lot happens in this short novel. Much of the book is given to evocative and vivid descriptions of the views from the ISS. We also learn a bit of the back story of those on board and how they are dealing with life on the station as well as how they are relating to their family left down on Earth.

Unfortunately, this book goes nowhere. Nothing interesting or exciting happens on the station. There is no inciting incident. I kept waiting for something to go wrong and for those on board to work together to overcome it. Nada. Don’t misunderstand, the writing is incredibly powerful and descriptive. You feel like you are experiencing what it must be like to be in orbit. And those on board have rich pasts and incredibly supportive relationships with each other despite the politics of their countries. But there is no plot whatsoever. This book is everything that English teachers love and their students love to hate.

My rating: 2/5

Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt

This one is my book club’s selection for December when we read contemporary fiction. We all vote on what to read from the three highest rated (on GoodReads) books from those suggested by our members. One of the other members of my book club suggested this one. I am so grateful to her as I am not sure I would have read it otherwise.

Tova is an elderly widow who works nights cleaning the aquarium in Sowell Bay, WA, a two-hour drive north from Seattle. There she connects with a great Pacific octopus named Marcellus who is approaching the end of his life. Thirty years ago her son Erik mysteriously disappeared the summer after his senior year in high school. A young man named Cameron comes to town in search of his father whom he has never met and whose mother had some sort of connection to the town. Through a series of events, their lives all intersect. The octopus is the first to realize something about the other two and does his best to show them what he discovered.

Writing that summary, it seems a little ridiculous. But it never felt that way to me, despite many of the chapters being narrated in the first person by Marcellus. The setting evoked a lot of feelings. My family is from the Seattle area. Tova is Swedish and so is most of my family from that area. Reading this book was almost like reading about family history. Tova even reminded me a bit of my great grandmother. The characters felt very realistic as well as the ways they behaved even when they were less than ideal. Writing this review I am finding it hard to adequately communicate how this story touched me so deeply. Yet it did. One of my favorites of the year.

My rating: 5/5

Oona Out of Order by Margarita Montimore

I first learned about this book on the podcast What Should I Read Next?. It is the story of a young woman born on New Year’s Day. As the clock strikes midnight ringing in the new year and her nineteenth birthday, she finds herself suddenly in a strange place in a strange version of her body. It turns out that she lives the year nineteen on the inside but fifty-one on the outside. And on the eve of each of her birthday’s she has no idea what year of her life she will live next. In this way, she really does live her life out of order. I found this unusual take on time travel interesting and decided to read the book.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Oona’s father died when she was a girl and her mother was unusual in the way she raised her. She readily accepts the weird life that her daughter is experiencing and is the one person always there for her on each of her birthdays. She learns about an assistant she has when she is 51/19 who is also there for her in her older years. As such, this is a story of relationships explored through unusual circumstances. In many ways, Oona is forced to mature much quicker than young people often do.

What really touched me about this book is how real it felt despite the rather absurd (but fun!) premise. The challenges that Oona faces may be out place time-wise, but they are very relatable to the reader. And the way she addresses them feels very realistic. I can see someone behaving as she does. The book reminded me of a combination of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin and The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. If you liked either of those books, you might enjoy this one as well. It is an amazing story of family, love, growing up, aging, and all the other messy things we call life.

My rating: 4.5/5

Deep Relationships

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow book cover

There has been a lot of hype this year about Gabrielle Zevin’s novel Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. It is all deserved. The book is a tale of lifelong friendship that starts in a children’s hospital. Sadie and Sam go on to become world-famous video game programmers. Many reviewers have focused on that last aspect of the novel, but the story is much deeper than that.

This is a story that any person can identify with. These friends support each other, fight, go through periods of not speaking, and still care deeply and struggle together and with each other. It is a tale of relationship more than anything else. And it is an engrossing story supremely well-told.

The author uses what some may call gimmicks in a few places. For instance, one chapter is a he said/she said where the same experiences are told from the point of view of each of the main characters. Another chapter is told in the second person (you). However, in each case, the method of writing serves the storytelling well. At the end of the book I felt I had been taken a deep into the lives of very real people from whom I learned a lot about the struggles and rewards of deep relationship.

Only Meh

On my recent vacation, we started listening to a second audio book on our drive home. We only got about a third of the way through by the time we got home. When I asked my partner if she wanted to continue to listen to it, she declined. I should have trusted her judgment.

The book was The Bookshop of Yesterdays by Amy Meyerson. The story is about a woman whose uncle dies. She returns from Philadelphia to her where she grew up in LA. Once there she discovers that her uncle has left her a sort of treasure hunt. He had done this many times when she was a girl. She struggles with each step of the hunt to uncover the mystery of who her uncle was and how that relates to her.

The book wasn’t bad. It was just “meh”. And with so many good books out there to read, quitting this one would have been justified. But there was just enough there to keep me going to the end. My partner and I figured out the main twist while we were on our way home in the first third of the book. The literary references and anchoring the story on a bookstore were really what drew me in and kept me going. I found the characters a bit simplistic and not very relatable. So, again, not a bad book. There are just a lot of better ones out there. Read those.