69 pages • 2 hours read
Fredrik BackmanThe Winners
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Series Context: The Beartown Trilogy
The Winners by Fredrik Backman is the third and final book of the Beartown trilogy. The novels follow the intersecting lives of an ensemble of residents in the Swedish forest towns Beartown and Hed as they grapple with violence and tragedy.
The first novel, Beartown, focuses on the Beartown community. The town is dependent on the success of their junior hockey team for economic investment and growth, as in recent years local jobs have significantly declined. Kevin Erdahl is the star of the team who becomes unstoppable while protected by his best friend Benjamin “Benji” Ovich. The team also welcomes a younger player named Amat who has astounding speed and skill. After winning their semi-final game, Kevin sexually assaults Maya Andersson; her father, Peter, and mother, Kira, help her go to the police. Kevin is arrested as the team leaves for their final game, causing the team to lose. Maya faces blame and stigma from people who assume she made the assault up. The investigation is dropped due to a lack of evidence. Maya takes a gun into the woods and holds Kevin at gunpoint, pulling the trigger but revealing that the gun has not been loaded. Although she continues to carry trauma with her for the rest of her life, Kevin now also lives with fear.
In Us Against You, Beartown struggles to heal after the trauma of the previous book, a difficulty exacerbated by economic uncertainty now that most of the hockey sponsors have started to funnel funds to the neighboring town of Hed. The Andersson family faces repeated cruelties from others in the neighborhood who continue to blame Maya for the hockey loss the year before. Beartown brings in a new coach, Elizabeth Zackell, to revitalize the team by building it around Benji. Benji’s homosexuality is revealed when Ana, in a moment of anger and rejection, uploads pictures of him kissing a new male teacher. Although Benji forgives Ana, people from Hed use this as an opportunity to bully him. Richard Theo, a local politician, uses his many connections to spread dissent between the two towns hoping to gain political favor and power. When a young man named Vidar is released from juvenile detention, he and Ana begin a romance as he steps into the Beartown goalie position. Tensions between Hed and Beartown escalate until there is a car chase through the forest between the two towns. Vidar pushes Ana out of the way of a vehicle but is killed as a result. Maya leaves to go to music college.
The first two books provide the foundation for the tensions and discontent explored in The Winners. By establishing the social and economic strife developed between the two towns, Backman shows how rumors take hold of people and morph their identities. He reveals the connectivity between communities and individuals as, repeatedly, cause and effect shows that Everything and Everyone is Connected. The characters whom readers have come to love and hate by the third book are faced with the consequences of their own actions, particularly the consequences of their community-focused decisions.
Socio-Historic Context: Gun Violence in Sweden
The Winners culminates in the shooting deaths of Rodri and Benji at the hands of Matteo, who is himself shot dead before he can commit any more killings. Gun violence in Sweden is a timely topic, and Backman’s novel reflects both the headlines and widespread worry in Sweden about gun violence. While rates of gun-related violence are far lower in Sweden than in the United States, Sweden has nevertheless been called the gun violence capital of Europe—despite the country’s rigorous gun-control laws. Gun-related violence has been on the rise since 2005, making Sweden the only country in Europe to have an increase in gun violence over the last two decades. In the year 2020, there were more than 360 gun-related incidents, including 47 deaths and 117 injuries.
Most of the gun violence in Sweden is connected to gangs and to organized crime, and most of it takes place in the areas lying outside Sweden’s major cities. In fact, eight out of every 10 of the 2020 incidents just cited were directly linked to organized crime. The violence is often connected to the drug trade and decreased confidence in law enforcement. In this respect, the gun violence in Backman’s story is nontypical, because the motive in The Winners is pent-up anger and revenge, not gang violence, and the setting is a pair of small towns, not a European exurb.
However, Backman does allude to organized crime in The Winners through the presence of Lev and his scrapyard. Lev and his employees are rumored to deal in drugs and stolen items; Lev’s acquaintance engages in bribery while at the NHL draft, showing that Lev and his companions have a different outlook and approach from the others in Beartown. While Lev’s gang members do not perform gun violence, Lev has a pistol, and it is at Lev’s scrapyard that Matteo buys the pistol he needs to permanently change the Beartown and Hed communities. In any case, the novel’s portrayal of gun violence resonates with readers not just in Sweden but all over Europe and in the United States as well.
Related Titles
By Fredrik Backman
