Washington Times
PRAISE FOR US AGAINST YOU
“What you get in a Fredrik Backman work is wonderful writing and brilliant insights into things that truly matter—right vs. wrong, fear vs. courage, love vs. hate, the importance and limits of friendship and loyalty, and more. Fredrik Backman is one of the world’s best and most interesting novelists. He is a giant among the world’s great novelists—and this literary giant is still growing.
US Weekly
"Deftly explores recovery and rebirth."
Chicago Tribune
"[Backman] creates an astute emotional world much bigger than a small Swedish town...A novel you can sink into."
The Washington Post
If Alexander McCall Smith’s and Maeve Binchy’s novels had a love child, the result would be the work of Swedish writer Fredrik Backman...With his wry acceptance of foible and failure, Backman combines a singular style with a large and compassionate perspective for his characters...[His] novels have wide appeal, and for good reason. Us Against You takes a lyrical look at how a community heals, how families recover and how individuals grow.
Green Valley News (Arizona)
"Backman is the Dickens of our age, and though you'll cry, your heart is safe in his hands."
CBS Local
"A light hearted, deeply moving novel about a grumpy but loveable curmudgeon who finds his solitary world."
The Washington Times
Mr. Backman cements his standing as a writer of astonishing depth and proves that he also has very broad range plus the remarkable ability to make you understand the feelings of each of a dozen different characters. . . . The story is fully packed with wise insights into the human experience causing characters and readers to ponder life’s great question of who we are, what we hope to be and how we should lead our lives.
Chicago Tribune
"[Backman] creates an astute emotional world much bigger than a small Swedish town...A novel you can sink into."
Library Journal - Audio
★ 09/01/2018
Everything that happens in this resonating sequel to Beartown is related in the first two pages. But listeners will want to hear every word to discover how the events play out—better yet, they'll want to absorb every echoing nuance brilliantly embodied by Marin Ireland, who returns to this remote town as it desperately attempts to mend from a vicious rape that destroyed the hockey team. "When we found out the truth, we fell apart, taking the town with us… This is the story of what happened afterward." A new coach takes charge, a team is reassembled. Fighting for ultimate control is a Svengali-like politician whose rise and fall both prove inevitable. Through the muck of corruption, greed, rivalry, blame, and so much hate, Beartown will need to remember that hockey "is a simple game, if you strip away all the crap surrounding it… Everyone gets a stick. Two nets. Two teams. Us against you."VERDICT With Beartown's previous success, similar victory is all but guaranteed for Us; Ireland's unfaltering enhancement will have audiences clamoring for the audio option. ["Even more potential for book group discussion as Backman explores…what makes us all tick": LJ 4/15/18 starred review of the Atria hc.]—Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon, Washington, DC
Library Journal
★ 04/15/2018
This follow-up to Beartown is about hockey—and everything else. Here the residents of Backman's isolated Swedish town, with some new additions, resume their lives where they left off at the end of the earlier novel. Since the history of each individual is examined and outlined in turn, new readers can catch up quickly. Some minor incidents in the first book play out in this one, exploding the little mines buried in Beartown. With a penchant for foreshadowing and then foiling readers' expectations, Backman widens the vision of the setting, encompassing the rival town of Hed and its own hockey team, made up of former players from Beartown's soon-to-be disbanded league. It's just a game, two teams, sticks and pucks. Us against you, doesn't that say it all? VERDICT There is even more potential for book group discussion here as Backman explores violence, political maneuvering, communities, feminism, sexuality, criminality, the role of sports in society, and what makes us all tick. [See Prepub Alert, 12/11/17.]—Mary K. Bird-Guilliams, Chicago
JUNE 2018 - AudioFile
You’d be forgiven for comparing narrator Marin Ireland and author Fredrik Backman to the great hockey tandem Mark Messier and Wayne Gretzky. Like Messier and Gretzky, Ireland and Backman are quite the formidable pair (as was discovered when Ireland narrated Backman’s bestseller, BEARTOWN.) Backman’s new novel picks up where BEARTOWN left off, and Ireland doesn’t miss a beat (or open net, if you’d prefer a sports analogy). She once again gives an unforced, nuanced take on characters that include adolescents struggling to find their way, a crusty old barkeep, a power-hungry politician, and a married couple hoping to reconnect after terrible tragedies. If you enjoyed Ireland’s work in BEARTOWN, you will not be disappointed hearing her read US AGAINST YOU. J.P.S. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2018-05-01
Shockwaves from the incidents in Beartown (2017) shake an economically depressed hockey town in this latest from the author of A Man Called Ove.Swedish novelist Backman loves an aphorism and is very good at them; evident in all his novels is an apparent ability to state a truth about humanity with breathtaking elegance. Often, he uses this same elegance to slyly misdirect his readers. Sometimes he overreaches and words that sound pretty together don't hold up to scrutiny. This novel has a plethora of all three. Grim in tone, it features an overstocked cast of characters, all of whom are struggling for self-definition. Each has previously been shaped by the local hockey club, but that club is now being defunded and resources reallocated to the club of a rival town. Some Beartown athletes follow, some don't. Lines are drawn in the sand. Several characters get played by a Machiavellian local politician who gets the club reinstated. Nearly all make poor decisions, rolling the town closer and closer to tragedy. Backman wants readers to know that things are complicated. Sure, many of Beartown's residents are bigots and bullies. But some are generous and selfless. Actually, the bigots and bullies are also generous and selfless, in certain circumstances. And Lord knows they've all had a rough time of it. The important thing to remember is that hockey is pure. Except when it inspires violence. This is an interesting tactic for a novel in our cultural moment of sensitivity, and it can feel cumbersome. "When guys are scared of the dark they're scared of ghosts and monsters," he writes. "But when girls are scared of the dark they're scared of guys." Margaret Atwood said it better and with more authority decades ago.Backman plays the story for both cynicism and hope, and his skill makes both hard, but not impossible, to resist.