(Spoilers for both Beartown and Us Against You). I just finished Us against You, the second book in the Beartown series, and while I loved the characters and the way the author creates such a lived in setting, something is nagging at me. Backman (in these books at least – I haven't read any of his other works) likes to hint at something happening and then fake out the reader.
A perfect example of this is the very first sentence of Beartown: "Late one evening toward the end of March, a teenager picked up a double-barreled shotgun, walked into the forest, put the gun to someone else's forehead, and pulled the trigger. This is the story of how we got there." So, through the most blatant subtext possible, someone is going to die, and this book chronicles why. Now, of course, if you've finished Beartown (which I'm assuming you have. If you haven't I'd definitely recommend!) you'll know that Maya never kills Kevin. And while I don't dislike the ending–I actually quite enjoy Maya's thought process–it just kind of feels like the entire book was hinged on this tension that never paid off. In this case, knowing the future increased tension because we know that something is going to happen, but it is ultimately unsatisfying when that hook isn't paid off in the way its hinted. When the subtext is betrayed because it wasn't stated, so its not a lie.
I'm not trying to criticize Backman's use of unexpected outcomes. As an example of one I like, the end of Us Against You teases a car crash for a couple of chapters. It is revealed in one chapter that the car crash is between some Hed fans and the Andersson's Volvo, then it is revealed an old man is also involved. Then, a chapter ends with Ana appearing from the trees and stepping out into the headlights of an incoming vehicle. Then in a twist foreshadowed constantly in Vidar's and Ana's interactions, Vidar throws himself into the way of the car, saving Ana's life and sacrificing his own. While the crash being deadly and Ana's and Vidar's relationship not living on is stated constantly in the third person omnicient text, the way the sequence plays out is still unexpected. There are moments like this in Beartown too where I think Backman pulls of the spoil the ending too.
I have two examples that are my least favorite, however. One: In the end of Beartown Maya follows Kevin through the forest with a gun. The text jumps forward to future Maya and Kevin, effectively spoiling that Kevin doesn't die and Maya doesn't go to jail for murder. So, before she even pulls the trigger, I know as the reader that this isn't going to happen. It kills the tension of the actual moment when Maya reveals the gun wasn't loaded. The second example is in Us Against You. In the beginning of the book Maya and Ana venture into the forest and Benji stalks them through the trees. The text states that Ana would regret not bringing her shotgun with her that night. And this is heavily implied to be because Benji, who the text has been telling us is wild and uncontrolled, is going to hurt them. (I think it actually has something to do with Ana wanting it for their little island house). After I read this scene I felt bad because I had thought of Benji exactly what everyone else thought of him: that he was wild, dangerous, and unstable. But of course I thought that–I'm not a citizen of Beartown. The text told me what to think, and so I thought it. So I left feeling lied to. If they had just removed that part about Ana regretting the shotgun, and Benji about to do something horrible, it would have been a really great scene.
Beartown is littered with these little sentences stating that bad things are soon to come. It almost feels like when you finish a episode and the show tries to key you into the next episode with a "And next time on…" But I don't feel like its implemented perfectly. Sometimes, he nails the tension. Usually I'd say this is when the drama of the actual scene matches the drama of the promised scene. But when Benji goes into the forest, and shoots his gun, and then someone's body is found dead, and it turns out Ann Katrin just happened to die at the same time, and Benji was hallucinating a bear, it feels cheap. It feels like Backman was trying to get us to freak out like Benji was dead but he didn't want to kill him yet. He left us for pages with the notion that Benji had just "gone into the forest" the reality is much less impactful. And even though what Benji actually does is great–he's my fav so I obviously don't want him to die–and incredibly impactful in its own right, the presentation of a fakeout ruins the emotion that could have been derived from such a scene. The immense relief that comes when Benji doesn't kill himself doesn't need to be contrived by pretending for a moment he did. We all knew what he was going to do when he went out there so the dread was already present.
So its not just the fake-outs, or the heavy foreshadowing, or the betrayal of subtext, or even the framing pointing to something so drastically different then the story. It's all of it.
The book I think is at its best when Backman pulls the trigger the second he lifts the gun. One of my favorite moments of Us Against You is when Ana takes the pictures of Benji kissing the other man in the forest. The shock that went through my system was insane. There was no foreshadowing except for the actual tangible emotional state Ana was in. Another of my favorites, as I already mentioned, is when Vidar sacrifices himself for Ana. The sentence "And he died like he lived. Instantly." Got me so hard.
So, in the end what I came here to discuss was the way Backman plays with tension through his visits to the future, and how these impact the emotional impact of moments in the book. When our expectations are successfully subverted in an equally impactful way, these spoilers work really well. But when the tension decreases or the scene's ending is spoiled by a fake-out, framing, or future spoilers, it can destroy the tension the book has been building.
I love the story of Beartown, but this really annoyed me. Do you guys have any thoughts?
Oops I wrote an essay
by Mercury947