93 pages 3 hours read

Fredrik Backman

Beartown

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2016

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Chapters 1-10

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 1 Summary

The entire text of Chapter One is: “Late one evening towards 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” (1). 

Chapter 2 Summary

It is March in Beartown. The narrator says that, “Beartown isn’t most places” (2). The narrator describes people waking and commuting to work, and that in the background they all hear the noise “Bang bang bang” (3).

A 15-year-old girl named Maya is playing a guitar in her bed. Her guitar is her “first love” (3) even though she has been in love many times. Her father loves hockey but she hates it.

The town is described as “losing” and that “[i]t has been a very long time since it won anything” (3). The town is losing jobs and the only passion anyone feels is for hockey, even though the team no longer wins. There is a hope that if the team improves, the town will improve.

A 15-year-old boy, Amat, sits in his bedroom, which is covered with NHL hockey posters. Every night he sleeps with his skates by his bed.