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. 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. Rather, it acts as a way of understanding the characters and the way they see, and interact with, the world. Whilst it is central to life in Beartown, detailed depictions of the games or the statistics are not present here. Readers should not expect a novel which focuses primarily on ice hockey. Through all this, the novel comments upon masculinity in sports, the ways in which sports can exclude and include, and parenthood and mental health. 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. 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.
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