Us Against You
Fredrik Backman, 2017
Contemporary fiction Literary fiction
A small hockey town and its rival reckon with the aftermath of a scandal, in a novel about loyalty, fear and what a community will sacrifice to belong.
Feels like tenderness, dread and curiosity. About art, society and death.
A page from the book
The dark is a different thing depending on who you are.
They run only where there are lights. They don’t say anything but are both thinking the same thing: guys never think about light, it just isn’t a problem in their lives. When guys are scared of the dark, they’re scared of ghosts and monsters, but when girls are scared of the dark, they’re scared of guys. Fredrik Backman.Backman is Swedish, and Us Against You is the sequel to Beartown. He has said he knows little about hockey but a lot about small towns.
Books that feel like this
More by Fredrik Backman
A Man Called Ove
Fredrik Backman, 2012
A grumpy Swedish man with strict rules and a Saab finds his orderly life interrupted by the messy neighbours next door. Funny, tender and sometimes bleak.
My Friends
Fredrik Backman, 2025
A teenage vandal, a perfect plan, and a painting worth more than a life—Backman’s funniest, most tender voice yet.
Anxious People
Fredrik Backman, 2019
A failed bank robber takes a roomful of apartment-viewing strangers hostage, and the police try to work out who is really trapped.
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Questions readers ask
- What is Us Against You like?
- Feels like tenderness, dread and curiosity. About art, society and death.
- What should I read after Us Against You?
- If you liked Us Against You, try The Goldfinch (Donna Tartt), Never Lie (Freida McFadden) and The Plague (Albert Camus).
A taste of the feed
A case for wading straight through the worst of it, eyes open.
That life - whatever else it is - is short. That fate is cruel but maybe not random. That Nature (meaning Death) always wins but that doesn’t mean we have to bow and grovel to it. That maybe even if we’re not always so glad to be here, it’s our task to immerse ourselves anyway: wade straight through it, right through the cesspool, while keeping eyes and hearts open. And in the midst of our dying, as we rise from the organic and sink back ignominiously into the organic, it is a glory and a privilege to love what Death doesn’t touch.
The Goldfinch · Donna Tartt
The family maxim that makes intimacy sound like a death sentence.
After all, my mother always said that the only way two people can keep a secret is if one of them is dead.
Never Lie · Freida McFadden
The simplest fact can become a capital offense.
There always comes a time in history when the person who dares to say that 2+2=4 is punished by death. And the issue is not what reward or what punishment will be the outcome of that reasoning. The issue is simply whether or not 2+2=4.
The Plague · Albert Camus
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