Britt-Marie Was Here Book Review

---

Britt-Marie Was Here revolves around 63-year-old Britt-Marie, a woman who finds herself living alone after her husband has a heart attack and cheats on her with another woman. Needing to start a live on her own, she goes to the job centre and doesn’t leave until she has a job. Britt-Marie then finds herself moving to Borg – a dying town with not much left going for it, and residents who are either stuck there or too set in their ways to move. But when Britt-Marie experiences the children’s passion for football, she begins to uncover other things about this unsuspecting place, things which may just convince her to stay.

Having loved Beartown and adored A Man Called Ove, this just really didn’t cut the mustard for me. I found Britt-Maire interesting as a character; like Ove she displays a lot of stereotypes typical of her generation and has opinions on a lot of things, but unlike Ove, she’s just not likeable. I did find myself warming to her towards the end, but by then, I just wasn’t that invested in her story. There were moments that I liked, like the fact she leaves a snickers out to feed a rat, or her obsession with a specific brand of cleaning product. For other people these moments, I’m sure, would culminate into a love for Britt-Marie, but I just never got there with her.

To put it bluntly, I don’t like football. In fact I hate it. And given there is so much football in this book, and the characters’ passion for football is what should make this book compelling, I think that was probably why I could never get on board and relate to them in a way I feel I could with Backman’s other books. Unlike the hockey-mad town of Beartown, I never felt the camaraderie for football in Borg.

If anything, the story I was most invested in was Vega, Omar, and Sami’s. This sibling relationship was compelling and beautiful and their storylines did redeem this book for me – it felt more like the Backman I was used to and I was grateful to get to know them. With them in mind, the quietly impactful moments are what makes this book almost good; I know the power of Backman’s writing so the lesser-focussed on relationships in this novel and the plethora of interesting side characters were actually the thing I wanted him to focus on more.

• 

• 

All in all, I am not going to tell you not to read a Backman book because I know how great his books can be. Prolific authors always run the risk of quantity over quality and Britt-Marie Was Here just didn’t do it for me, but I’ve no doubt that someone else will love it, and despite my experience with this, I can’t wait to read all of Backman’s other books too!