I picked up Beartown, by Fredrik Backman, in our ECP library downstairs and brought it up to the apartment last week. When I first started I soon realized this novel was about a high school hockey team in a small town in Canada....and I thought "Oh, I will never get into this!" I could not imagine reading a book about hockey that would keep me engaged.
I was wrong. This novel is so well written and has so many layers that I was sad to page 415 and realize I was done. There were so many sentences and paragraphs that made me stop and think....but I literally read the following paragraphs three times.
"Hate can be a deeply stimulating emotion. The world becomes much easier to understatnd and much less terrifying if you divide everything and everyone into friends and enemies, we and they, good and evil. The easiest way to unite a group isn't through love, because love is hard. It makes demands. Hate is simple.
So the first thing that happens in a conflict is that we choose a side, because that's easier than trying to hold two thoughts in our heads at the same time. The second thing that happens is that we seek out facts that confirm what we want to believe - comforting facts, ones that permit life to go on as normal. The third thing is that we dehumanize our enemy. There are many ways of doing that, but none is easier than taking her name away from her.
....
It doesn't take long to persuade each other to stop seeing a person as a person. And when enough people are quiet for long enough, a handful of voices can give the impression that everyone is screaming."
This book's copyright is 2016 and the author is Swedish. His thoughts perfectly echo so much of 2022.
If you want a more-than-good read find Beartown. You won't be sorry.
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