Reflections on Beartown by Fredrick Backman
Beartown by Fredrik Backman is a very good read. This is a huge generalization, but I've noticed something about serious fiction of late. I've been reading novels for a long time. I was in high school in the seventies; I did my undergrad degree in Literature in the early eighties. The university I attended was old school, which is to say, we studied old books -- the authors were a lot of dead, white guys. Even in the modern lit courses -- Children's Literature, "Modern" Literature, and American Literature to name a few -- the books we read were old. All this is a prelude to saying that most old classic novels I've read don't end well. Call it a bent toward tragedy as a preferred dramatic disposition; call it, later, a leaning toward existentialism, realism or pessimism; the point is, many old/classic novels don't end happily-ever-after. Fast forward several decades in my life and I've noticed a new trend in modern serious literature. It t