Finding herself

Sometimes it's easier to go on living, not even knowing who you are, when at least you know precisely where you are while you go on not knowing.

Fredrik Backman, Britt-Marie Was Here

Britt-Marie Was Here (2014) by Fredrik Backman is nothing like The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend by Katrina Bivald, reviewed here on Aug. 31, except for the fact that they both tell the same story.

That story is this: An introverted woman still trying to discover her place in the world finds herself in a very small town in the middle of nowhere and within days dramatically changes the town, just as the town dramatically changes her.

The novels actually have something else in common: Both were written by Swedish authors and became bestsellers in the United States and elsewhere. Was Bivald influenced by the blueprint developed two years previously by Backman? Who can say?

Britt-Marie Was Here picks up a subplot from My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry, another Backman novel published a year earlier and reviewed here on July 1. Britt-Marie is a 60-something woman with firm ideas about what's proper and what's not and whose quest for orderliness in the world leads her to compulsive cleaning. In the earlier book we learn that her husband, Kent, is unfaithful. Before she can go to bed each night, she must wash Kent's shirt to remove the perfume smell.

Now in Britt-Marie Was Here, she has left Kent and accepts the only job she can find, as the temporary director of a recreation center scheduled for demolition in the nothing town of Borg. The few kids in Borg are soccer crazy, but they have neither a pitch nor a coach. As recreation director Britt-Marie reluctantly agrees to become their coach, even though she lacks both any knowledge of or any interest in soccer.

Before long violence comes to Borg, boys die, a policeman falls in love with Britt-Marie, the soccer team and its coach give the town hope for its future and Kent tracks down his wife and begs her to return home. But has he really changed or does he just have a lot of dirty shirts? Britt-Marie, who craves order, faces a decision that could change everything.

Backman has a gift for making a narrative both terribly funny and terribly poignant at the same time, leaving a reader to wonder about the reason for all those tears.