He helps the caretaker every morning, unlocking doors and checking lights, sorting out the pucks and driving the zamboni, getting the rink ready for the day. First to show up will be the figure skaters, in the most antisocial time-slots. Then all the hockey teams, one after the other in order of rank. The best times are reserved for the juniors and the A-team. The junior team is now so good it’s almost at the top of the hierarchy.
Amat isn’t on the junior team yet, he’s only fifteen, but maybe next season. If he does everything that’s demanded of him. One day he’ll take his mom away from here, he’s sure of that. One day he’ll stop adding and subtracting income and expenditures in his head all the time. There’s an obvious difference between the children who live in homes where the money can run out and the ones who don’t. How old you are when you realize that also makes a difference.
Amat knows his options are limited, so his plan is simple: from here to the junior team, then the A-team, then professional. When his first wages reach his account he’ll grab that cleaning cart from his mother and never let her see it again. He’ll allow her aching fingers to rest and give her aching back a break. He doesn’t want possessions. He just wants to lie in bed one single night without having to count.
The caretaker taps Amat on the shoulder when his chores are done and passes him his skates. Amat puts them on, grabs his stick, and goes out onto the empty ice. That’s the deal: the caretaker gets help with the heavy lifting and tricky swing-doors that his rheumatism makes difficult and—as long as Amat floods the ice again after he practices—he can have the rink to himself for an hour before the figure skaters arrive. Those are the best sixty minutes of his day, every day.
He puts in his earphones, cranks the volume as loud as it will go, then sets off with speed. Across the ice, so hard into the boards at the other end that his helmet smacks the glass. Full speed back again. Again. Again. Again.
* * *
Fatima looks up briefly from her cart, allows herself a few moments in which to watch her son out there. The caretaker catches her eye, and she mouths the word “Thanks.” The caretaker merely nods and conceals a smile. Fatima remembers how odd she thought it when the club’s coaches first told her that Amat had exceptional talent. She only understood snippets of the language back then, and the fact that Amat could skate when he could barely walk was a divine mystery to her. Many years have passed since then, and she still hasn’t gotten used to the cold in Beartown, but she has learned to love the town for what it is. And she will never find anything in her life more unfathomable than the fact that the boy she gave birth to in a place that has never seen snow was born to play a sport on ice.
* * *
In one of the smaller houses in the center of town, Peter Andersson, general manager of Beartown Ice Hockey, gets out of the shower, red-eyed and breathless. He’s hardly slept, and the water hasn’t managed to rinse his nerves away. He’s been sick twice. He hears Kira bustle past the bathroom out in the hall, on her way to wake the children, and he knows exactly what she’s going to say: “For heaven’s sake, Peter, you’re over forty years old. When the GM is more nervous about a junior game than the players, maybe it’s time to take a tranquilizer, have a drink, and just calm down a bit!” The Andersson family has lived here for more than a decade now, since they moved back home from Canada, but he still hasn’t managed to get his wife to understand what hockey means in Beartown. “Seriously? You don’t think all you grown men are getting a bit too excited?” Kira has been asking all season. “The juniors are seventeen years old, practically still children!”
He kept quiet at first. But late one night he told her the truth: “I know it’s only a game, Kira. I know. But we’re a town in the middle of the forest. We’ve got no tourism, no mine, no high-tech industry. We’ve got darkness, cold, and unemployment. If we can make this town excited again, about anything at all, that has to be a good thing. I know you’re not from round here, love, and this isn’t your town, but look around: the jobs are going, the council’s cutting back. The people who live here are tough, we’ve got the bear in us, but we’ve taken blow after blow for a long time now. This town needs to win at something. We need to feel, just once, that we’re best. I know it’s a game. But that’s not all it is. Not always.”
Kira kissed his forehead hard when he said that, and held him tight, whispering softly in his ear: “You’re an idiot.” Which, of course, he knows.
He leaves the bathroom and knocks on his fifteen-year-old daughter’s door until he hears her guitar answer. She loves her guitar, not sports. Some days that makes him feel sad, but on plenty more days he’s happy for her.
* * *
Maya is still lying in bed, and plays louder when the knocking starts and she hears her parents outside the door. A mom with two university degrees who can quote the entire criminal code, but who could never say what icing or offside meant even if she was on trial. A dad who in return could explain every hockey strategy in great detail, but can’t watch a television show with more than three characters without exclaiming every five minutes: “What’s happening now? Who’s that? What do you mean, be quiet? Now I missed what they said . . . can we rewind?”
Maya can’t help both laughing and sighing when she thinks of that. You never want to get away from home as much as you do when you’re fifteen years old. It’s like her mom usually says when the cold and darkness have worn away at her patience and she’s had three or four glasses of wine: “You can’t live in this town, Maya, you can only survive it.”
* * *
Neither of them has any idea just how true that is.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Fredrik Backman is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Man Called Ove, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry, Britt-Marie Was Here, Beartown, and a novella, And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer. His books are published in more than forty countries. He lives in Stockholm with his wife and two children.
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ALSO BY FREDRIK BACKMAN
A Man Called Ove
My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry
Britt-Marie Was Here
And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer
Beartown
Don’t miss these other irresistable novels by New York Times bestselling author Fredrik Backman.
Meet Ove, a grumpy yet loveable man who finds his solitary world turned on its head when a boisterous young family moves in next door.
A Man Called Ove
* * *
A charming, warmhearted novel about a young girl whose grandmother leaves behind a series of letters, sending her on a journey that brings to life the world of her grandmother’s fairy tales.grandmother’s fairy tales.
My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry
* * *
A touching and hilarious story of a reluctant outsider who transforms a tiny village and a woman who finds love and second chances in the unlikeliest of places.
Britt-Marie Was Here
* * *
A moving portrait of an elderly man's struggle to hold on to his most precious memories, and his family's efforts to care for him even as they must find a way to let go.
And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer
* * *
Beartown has always been told it is second best. Now the junior ice hockey team has a chance to become champions. But it's what happens off the ice that will change this town forever.
Beartown
* * *
ORDER YOUR COPIES TODAY!
WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF FREDRIK BACKMAN
At first glance, Ove is almost certainly the grumpiest man you ever met.
Never trust first impressions.
* * *
“A cha
rming debut. . . . You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll feel new sympathy for the curmudgeons in your life.”
—People
“A thoughtful and charming exploration of the impact one life has on countless others—and an absolute delight.”
—CBS Philadelphia
Elsa is seven years old and different.
Her grandmother is a seventy-seven-year-old troublemaker.
When Granny asks Elsa to help her apologize to those she has wronged, the adventure of a lifetime begins.
* * *
“Believable and fanciful. Backman’s smooth storytelling infuses his characters with charm and wit. . . . A delightful story.”
—St. Louis Post Dispatch
“A delectable homage to the power of stories to comfort and heal, Backman’s tender tale of the touching relationship between a grandmother and granddaughter is a tribute to the everlasting bonds of deep family ties.”
—Booklist (starred review)
Britt-Marie is difficult, demanding, and socially awkward.
Britt-Marie is loyal, brave, and has a bigger heart than anybody knows.
Britt-Marie is ready for a change—but even she will be surprised by what happens next.
* * *
“A brilliant mix of belly-laughs, profound insight and captivating events delivered . . . with Backman’s pitch-perfect dialogue and an unparalleled understanding of human nature.”
—Shelf Awareness
“Heartfelt and truly stirring, Britt-Marie Was Here resonates long after the last page is read.”
—RT Magazine
Grandpa and Noah are sitting on a bench in a square that is getting smaller every day. They both love silly jokes, mathematics, and unnecessary presents.
As other memories fade, Grandpa holds onto Noah’s hand so he will be the last to go.
Here is where Grandpa and Noah will learn how to say goodbye.
* * *
“Winsome, bittersweet . . . wise and heartbreaking.”
—People Magazine
“I read this beautifully imagined and moving novella in one sitting, utterly wowed, wanting to share it with everyone I know.”
—Lisa Genova, bestselling author of Still Alice
Beartown has always been told it is second best.
Now their junior ice hockey team has a chance to become champions.
But it’s what happens off the ice that will change this town forever.
* * *
“Backman is a masterful writer, his characters familiar yet distinct, flawed yet heroic. . . . There are scenes that bring tears, scenes of gut-wrenching despair, and moments of sly humor.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“[It is] Backman’s rich characters that steal the show. . . . Love, sacrifice, and the bonds of friendship and family that shine through.”
—Publisher’s Weekly
Fredrik Backman’s new novel
US AGAINST YOU
will be published June 2018 by Atria Books.
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* * *
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2016 by Fredrik Backman
English language translation copyright © 2017 by Alice Menzies
Published by arrangement with the Salomonsson Agency
Originally published in Sweden in 2016 by Helsingborgs Dagblad
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First Atria Books hardcover edition October 2017
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Interior design by Carly Loman
Jacket art and design by Alan Dingman
Jacket photographs by Getty Images
Author photograph © Linnéa Jonasson Bernholm/Appendix Fotografi
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.
ISBN 978-1-5011-9349-1
ISBN 978-1-5011-9350-7 (ebook)
The Deal of a Lifetime Page 4
