Us Against You (Beartown #2)

by Fredrik Backman

As if the problem wasn’t that a girl was raped but that it happened to become public knowledge.

Truth is ugly and uncomfortable.

sometimes it’s more effective to be a big fish in a small pond than a small one in a big pond.

Very practical in many situations.

‘I’m from the Hollow.’ And every single bastard here will know that he remembers them.

Too emotional!

has become friends with the chair of the right committee, and that the case happened to be given to a new adviser, who considered that Vidar’s ‘treatment requirements needed to be reevaluated.’

Another thing that sounds so right and so wrong at the same time.

Some children never quite manage to escape their parents; they’re guided by their compass, see through their eyes. When terrible things happen, most people become waves, but some people become rocks. Waves are tossed back and forth when the wind comes, but the rocks just take a beating, immovable, waiting for the storm to blow over.

Being a mother can be like drying out the foundations of a house or mending a roof: it takes time, sweat, and money, and once it’s done everything looks exactly the same as it did before. It’s not the sort of thing anyone gives you praise for. But spending an extra hour in the office is like hanging up a beautiful painting or a new lamp: everyone notices.

What an analogy!

Anxiety. It’s such a peculiar thing. Almost everyone knows what it feels like, yet none of us can describe it. Maya looks at herself in the mirror, wonders why it can’t be seen on the outside. Not even on X-rays – how does that work? How can something that bangs away at us so horribly hard on the inside not show up on the pictures as black scars, scorched into our skeletons?

Our spontaneous reactions are rarely our proudest moments. It’s said that a person’s first thought is the most honest, but that often isn’t true. It’s often just the most stupid. Why else would we have afterthoughts?

True

Even so, he can still feel its stare, like when you wake up early in the morning and don’t have to open your eyes to know that the person next to you is looking at you.

There’s going to be an ice hockey game. Beartown Ice Hockey against Hed Hockey. The rest of the country is barely aware that it’s taking place; no one cares except for here. But here everyone cares.

Something insignificant to the world but very significant to them.

‘The papers are writing about you. Reporters are calling people in town, asking about you. Goddamn media assholes with their stupid politics, you know what they want, don’t you? They want to get one of us to say something stupid so they can show that we’re just stupid, bigoted rednecks. So they can go back to the big city on their high horse and feel so morally superior –’

Classic, privileged.