
Beartown
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Narrated by:
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Marin Ireland
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By:
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Fredrik Backman
About this listen
2018 Audie Award Finalist for Fiction
The number-one New York Times best-selling author of A Man Called Ove returns with a dazzling, profound novel about a small town with a big dream - and the price required to make it come true.
People say Beartown is finished. A tiny community nestled deep in the forest, it is slowly losing ground to the ever encroaching trees. But down by the lake stands an old ice rink, built generations ago by the working men who founded this town. And in that ice rink is the reason people in Beartown believe tomorrow will be better than today. Their junior ice hockey team is about to compete in the national semifinals, and they actually have a shot at winning. All the hopes and dreams of this place now rest on the shoulders of a handful of teenage boys.
Being responsible for the hopes of an entire town is a heavy burden, and the semifinal match is the catalyst for a violent act that will leave a young girl traumatized and a town in turmoil. Accusations are made, and, like ripples on a pond, they travel through all of Beartown, leaving no resident unaffected.
Beartown explores the hopes that bring a small community together, the secrets that tear it apart, and the courage it takes for an individual to go against the grain. In this story of a small forest town, Fredrik Backman has found the entire world.
©2017 Fredrik Backman (P)2017 S&S AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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-
Story
Meet Ove. He’s a curmudgeon—the kind of man who points at people he dislikes as if they were burglars caught outside his bedroom window. He has staunch principles, strict routines, and a short fuse. But behind the cranky exterior there is a story and a sadness. So when one November morning a chatty young couple with two chatty young daughters move in next door and accidentally flatten Ove’s mailbox, it is the lead-in to a comical and heartwarming tale of unkempt cats, unexpected friendship, and the ancient art of backing up a U-Haul.
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By Far the Best Narrator of a Book I've Had
- By WanderLaw on 04-05-20
By: Fredrik Backman
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The Deal of a Lifetime
- A Novella
- By: Fredrik Backman
- Narrated by: Santino Fontana
- Length: 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
It all begins with a father telling a story to his son on Christmas Eve. But this isn't your typical Christmas story. The father admits to his son that he's taken a life but he won't say whose - not yet. One week earlier, in a hospital late at night, the man met a five-year-old girl with cancer. She's a smart kid - smart enough to know that she won't beat cancer by drawing with crayons all day, but it seems to make the adults happy, so she keeps doing it.
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Novellas Are Horrible!!!!!
- By 3xcharm on 12-28-17
By: Fredrik Backman
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And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer
- A Novella
- By: Fredrik Backman
- Narrated by: David Morse
- Length: 1 hr and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Grandpa and Noah are sitting on a bench in a square that keeps getting smaller every day. The square is strange but also familiar, full of the odds and ends that have made up their lives: Grandpa's work desk, the stuffed dragon that Grandpa once gave to Noah, the sweet-smelling hyacinths that Grandma loved to grow in her garden.
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Heartbreakingly Perfect
- By Jmo930 on 11-21-16
By: Fredrik Backman
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The Answer Is No
- A Short Story
- By: Fredrik Backman, Elizabeth DeNoma - translator
- Narrated by: Stacy Gonzalez
- Length: 1 hr and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Lucas knows the perfect night entails just three things: video games, wine, and pad thai. Peanuts are a must! Other people? Not so much. Why complicate things when he’s happy alone? Then one day the apartment board, a vexing trio of authority, rings his doorbell. And Lucas’s solitude takes a startling hike. They demand to see his frying pan. Someone left one next to the recycling room overnight, and instead of removing the errant object, as Lucas suggests, they insist on finding the guilty party. But their plan backfires. Colossally.
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Narrator doesn’t get Backman’s satire or rhythm
- By joey1603 on 12-01-24
By: Fredrik Backman, and others
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Things My Son Needs to Know About the World
- By: Fredrik Backman
- Narrated by: Santino Fontana
- Length: 3 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Things My Son Needs to Know About the World collects the personal dispatches from the front lines of one of the most daunting experiences any man can experience: fatherhood. As he conveys his profound awe at experiencing all the “firsts” that fill him with wonder and catch him completely unprepared, Fredrik Backman doesn’t shy away from revealing his own false steps and fatherly flaws, tackling issues both great and small, from masculinity and midlife crises to practical jokes and poop.
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Not my favorite Frederick Backman book
- By Frog on 06-16-19
By: Fredrik Backman
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Beartown \ (Spanish Edition)
- By: Fredrik Backman
- Narrated by: Irene Repeto
- Length: 15 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Cerca del lago en Beartown hay una pista de hielo, y en la pista Kevin, Amat, Benji y el resto del Equipo junior de hockey sobre hielo está a punto de competir en la semifinal nacional; y, de hecho, tiene la oportunidad de ganar. Todos los sueños y esperanzas de este lugar descansan ahora sobre los hombros de un grupo de adolescentes. Bajo la pesada carga, el partido se convierte en la catálisis de un acto violento que dejará a una joven traumatizada y a un pueblo en confusión. Se hacen las acusaciones y, como olas en un estanque, viajan a través de Beartown.
By: Fredrik Backman
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The Push
- A GMA Book Club Pick (A Novel)
- By: Ashley Audrain
- Narrated by: Marin Ireland
- Length: 8 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Blythe Connor is determined that she will be the warm, comforting mother to her new baby Violet that she herself never had. But in the thick of motherhood's exhausting early days, Blythe becomes convinced that something is wrong with her daughter - she doesn't behave like most children do. Or is it all in Blythe's head? Her husband, Fox, says she's imagining things. The more Fox dismisses her fears, the more Blythe begins to question her own sanity, and the more we begin to question what Blythe is telling us about her life as well.
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Disturbing, Jaw Dropping, Unforgettable
- By Wendi on 01-16-21
By: Ashley Audrain
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Atmosphere: A GMA Book Club Pick
- A Love Story
- By: Taylor Jenkins Reid
- Narrated by: Kristen DiMercurio, Julia Whelan, Taylor Jenkins Reid
- Length: 9 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Fast-paced, thrilling, and emotional, Atmosphere is Taylor Jenkins Reid at her best: transporting listeners to iconic times and places, creating complex protagonists, and telling a passionate and soaring story about the transformative power of love—this time among the stars.
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This has soared to the top of my all-time favs!
- By Kimberley on 06-03-25
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If We Were Villains
- A Novel
- By: M. L. Rio
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 12 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Oliver Marks has just served 10 years in jail - for a murder he may or may not have committed. On the day he's released, he's greeted by the man who put him in prison. Detective Colborne is retiring, but before he does, he wants to know what really happened a decade ago.
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Fake deep with a side of bland
- By Amazon Customer on 06-14-18
By: M. L. Rio
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Normal People
- A Novel
- By: Sally Rooney
- Narrated by: Aoife McMahon
- Length: 7 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Connell and Marianne grew up in the same small town, but the similarities end there. At school, Connell is popular and well liked, while Marianne is a loner. But when the two strike up a conversation - awkward but electrifying - something life changing begins. A year later, they’re both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet in a new social world while Connell hangs at the sidelines, shy and uncertain. Throughout their years at university, Marianne and Connell circle one another.
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Difficult, but Worth It
- By kdiz on 04-03-20
By: Sally Rooney
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Go as a River
- A Novel
- By: Shelley Read
- Narrated by: Cynthia Farrell
- Length: 9 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Seventeen-year-old Victoria Nash runs the household on her family’s peach farm in the small ranch town of Iola, Colorado—the sole surviving female in a family of troubled men. Wilson Moon is a young drifter with a mysterious past, displaced from his tribal land and determined to live as he chooses. Victoria encounters Wil by chance on a street corner, a meeting that profoundly alters both of their young lives, unknowingly igniting as much passion as danger. When tragedy strikes, Victoria leaves the only life she has ever known.
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Great character development
- By ALB on 11-22-23
By: Shelley Read
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The Atlas of Love
- A Novel
- By: Laurie Frankel
- Narrated by: Bailey Carr
- Length: 11 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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When Jill becomes both pregnant and single at the end of one spring semester, she and her two closest friends plunge into an experiment in tri-parenting, tri-schooling, and tri-habitating as grad students in Seattle. Naturally, everything goes wrong - but in ways no one sees coming. Janey Duncan narrates the adventure of this modern family with hilarity and wisdom and shows how three lives are forever changed by (un)cooperative parenting, literature, and a tiny baby named Atlas who upends and uplifts their entire world.
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Loved and hated and loved...
- By Meegan Casabar on 07-23-19
By: Laurie Frankel
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The Poisonwood Bible
- By: Barbara Kingsolver
- Narrated by: Dean Robertson
- Length: 15 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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The Poisonwood Bible is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it - from garden seeds to Scripture - is calamitously transformed on African soil. What follows is a suspenseful epic of one family’s tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in postcolonial Africa.
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Listen to the sample first!
- By Cheryl D on 07-30-08
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In Five Years
- A Novel
- By: Rebecca Serle
- Narrated by: Megan Hilty
- Length: 6 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Dannie Kohan lives her life by the numbers. She is nothing like her lifelong best friend - the wild, whimsical, believes-in-fate Bella. Her meticulous planning seems to have paid off after she nails the most important job interview of her career and accepts her boyfriend’s marriage proposal in one fell swoop, falling asleep completely content. But when she awakens, she’s suddenly in a different apartment, with a different ring on her finger, and beside a very different man.
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If you want a happy story, try another book
- By Mel on 03-23-20
By: Rebecca Serle
"Beartown" is about so many things: parenthood, navigating being a teen, the desperation that can engulf a small town into pack mentality. It touches on retirement and how it effects a sense of purpose. We see immeasurable loss, beating the odds, perseverance, abuse, revenge, forgiveness...and so much more.
From the above paragraph, you may think those are too many subjects to tackle in one book, but Backman makes it flow naturally and realistically.
At times, I felt that he was bordering on over description in regards to each character's inner thoughts, but as I read on, I came to appreciate the time he took to bring the reader into the characters' heads. Some may feel that the following is a spoiler, but I want to explain what I mean with an example, therefore, I'll preface the next section.
*Possibly could be considered a spoiler*
At one point, some boys throw a rock with an expletive written on it through a window. The mother/wife gets in her car and scares the boys in a way that could be perceived as unstable. But the reader has been inside her head. We've seen what she's been through. She's endured unimaginable loss. Outwardly, she seems abrasive and uncompromising, but the reader knows how much she has sacrificed for those she loves. You feel her desperation and helplessness and anger. Despite knowing how wrong it would have been, had she actually caused permanent damage, I found myself cheering her on; then, when she came to her senses, so did I. She wasn't insane; she had a temporary moment of insanity. Backman took a lot of time to get us inside her mind, and it allows the reader to understand her irrational behavior.
*End of possible spoiler*
What I like best about the book is the multiple layers given to each character. We see tough guys in moments of sensitivity. We see sensitive guys finding their strengths. It is easy to dismiss a character as universally shallow, until we see the character in a different environment and we watch them bloom into someone we'd like to know. Heroes make selfish/life altering choices and bullies evolve into better people.
I especially like the ending, because it felt so complete that I actually exhaled. This is a great book for discussion, and I'm encouraging my teen daughters to read it. The narrator's performance was spectacular in the audio version. I highly recommend it!
Backman Can Write Any Point of View!
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Best book I've listened to in years
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An emotional rollarcoaster you'll want to ride
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This is not about Hockey. This is about people.
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Must read
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Fantastic
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I don’t think a story has ever made me feel pride before, but this one did. I wish I could thank the author in person for this one. I burst into tears at the last line.
Incredible
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The best book about a topic I had no interest in!
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What else would you want in a story like this...
Intricately capturing
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Beartown: All Heart
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