This hurts too much to touch with words: book review of The Winners

Book name: The Winners

Author: Fredrik Backman

Translator: Neil Smith

I hate the fact that life has been so busy that I can’t now sit for 2-3 hours writing the review of a book I loved so much and cried for even more. But also enjoying being busy at this phase of life- busy with work, busy with chores, busy cooking meals and still getting time to be busy reading! The review is gonna be short, not because of the lengthy excuse I have given, but

This hurts too much to touch with words.

The Winners is the third and last book of the Beartown saga. It is about a town, a forest town and forest folks, who love hockey like their lives depend on it. Children go to the ice rink straight from school. This is a wintery place where folks can’t wait for autumn to begin because then the lakes will freeze to form an ice hockey surface.

The book is about how folks' lives are intertwined. A fireman, a nurse, a politician, a journalist, a lawyer, a hockey coach- different sorts of people collide in this book. We see the very best and very worst of what we are capable of. We wonder what could have gone different, whom could we save and mostly we regret... Life becomes an ice rink, every chapter a hockey match and we contemplate, did we win?

Backman gives his everything in this book. The sense of humor, the tangible moments he created in this book can’t be from any other author. The Winners breaks your heart, but shows you what life is all about, starting again…

Spring comes, and summer. It’s almost unbearable. But then autumn arrives, as brief as the blink of an eye, before winter finally hits us again. Life doesn’t go on, it starts again, everything possible once more. Anything can happen, all the best and all the most beautiful and all the biggest adventures in the world.