The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Nobody among my reading friends disliked Kristin Hannah’s The Nightingale more than I did. Couple my shudders at the memory of that book along with the way I felt about the last novel I read set in Alaska, Dave Eggers’s Heroes of the Frontier (lucky to pull two stars out of me), and it is a wonder that I even considered reading Kristin Hannah’s The Great Alone. All of the raving about how The Nightingale was the book that Hannah was born to write is completely misplaced. She has a family history that is linked in with the plot of The Great Alone, and that resonates throughout the novel. This was the book she was meant write.

I love my state and read a fair number of books set in Alaska, but most of them tend to be nonfiction. Oddly enough, the bulk of the fiction that comes from Alaskan writers tends to take place in places other than here. This leaves people from Outside as the ones who write the majority of the novels set on my home turf. Many of them have never even been here but see in our state either a catchy setting that will draw readers to their novels or someplace that gives their imagination room to roam. Often, that imagination goes well beyond the bounds of the possible and the real and into the realm of eye rolling, trying to play up stereotypes that any Alaskan would find ridiculous. I’m looking at you, Dave Eggers.

From the standpoint of sticking to the truth of things, Hannah is spot on with this novel. The setting of the book, a location a short boat ride from Homer, Alaska, is well sketched without playing up aspects that Outsiders would find enticing but locals would immediately spot as false. Her novel is set several decades ago, but even today many of her markers of plot and setting still hold true. Our family loves the Homer area, and my husband and I plan on retiring there, perhaps even in Seldovia, a small hamlet, much like the setting of The Great Alone, across Katchemak Bay from Homer. I love how this novel brought this place I love so much home in such an intimate way.

Another thing that Hannah does really well in this novel is letting her characters shape the plot and setting instead of letting those elements drive character development. One of my biggest complaints with The Nightingale was how stereotypical and wooden her characters were, as if the author had made a list of all the characters she felt a novel set in France during the Nazi occupation required. In this case the novel makes sense because the characters create a setting to suit themselves and in so doing an authentic plot is formed.

I absolutely recommend this novel for all readers who enjoy late twentieth century historical novels, realistic characters, and books set in the Last Frontier. 

Us Against You by Fredrik Backman ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

In Us against You Fredrik Backman does something very rare. He takes everything you learned in the first book of his duology and uses it to maximum effect without making you feel like he was just trying to sell another book. This book follows his Beartown, which was good but not quite five stars for me. 

So what bumped this one up that final star? I liked the subtlety of it. He picks up right where Beartown left off and is able to move his story forward without losing any momentum. Beartown did resolve to an ending (a book with cliffhangers will very rarely get more than two stars from me), but Backman left himself plenty of story, should he decide to pick up the threads.

And pick them up he did. Both books tell the story of the people in a very small rural town in Sweden. You only need to know one thing about the town: hockey is everything there. All of the town’s pride is wrapped up in the sport—past, present, and future. The first book revolves around a crime that takes place, involving the town’s star hockey player and the coach’s daughter. While the story does resolve in Beartown, Us Against You brings it to its full potential.

Backman’s strength is in the characters he creates. Without bowing to extreme stereotypes, he deftly brings his readers home to where his people live. The characters combine into collective forces to become, well, us against you. There is workplace drama, family dynamics, powerful friendships, dreams of glory. Plenty of dreams of glory. And what they can do to a town completely blind to their destructive side.

The power in this story comes from the exploration of human nature and what happens when the drive to win overtakes absolutely everything else. You do not need to know a thing about hockey to love both of these books. Hockey isn’t really the story here but the vehicle in which the psychology of the story is set. I cannot imagine a reader who wouldn’t marvel at these finely crafted novels, and so I recommend them without reservation to all readers.