La petite ville des grands rêves

You never want to get away from home as much as you do when you're fifteen years old.

No one in Beartown has ever spent more on their son’s port career, on one has given more to the team in sponsorship than his dad’s company, yet Benji can count the number of times he’s seen Kevin’s parents in the crowd of spectators on the fingers of one hand, and still have two fingers left. Benji asked his friend about it once. Kevin replied, ‘My parents aren’t interested in hockey.’ When Benji asked what they were interested in, Kevin replied, ‘Success.’ They were ten years old at the time.
When Kevin is top of the class in history tests, which he almost always is, and goes home and says he got forty-nine out of fifty questions right, his dad merely asks in an expressionless voice, ‘What did you get wrong?’ Perfection isn’t a goal in the Erdahl family, it’s the norm.

Kira remembers every inch of the descent into darkness. The greatest terror of every parent, waking up and listening out for small breaths. And every night you feel so foolish when you hear them, as usual, for worrying about nothing. ‘How did I become someone like this?’ you think. You promise yourself that you’ll relax, because of course you know that nothing’s going to happen. But the following night you still lie there wide awake, staring up at the ceiling and shaking your head, until you tell yourself, ‘Just tonight, then.’ And you creep out of bed and put your palms to your children’s little chests to feel them rising and falling.

Late one eveningtowards the end of March, a teenager picked up a double-barrelled shotgun, walked into the forest, put the gun to someone else's forehead, and pulled the trigger.
This is the story of how we got there.

There’s an old joke among the women of Beartown: ‘I just wish my husband would look at me the way he watches hockey!’ It’s never made Kira laugh, because she understands it all too well.

Religion is something between you and other people; it’s full of interpretations and theories and opinions. But faith . . . that’s just between you and God.

Everyone has a thousand wishes before a tragedy, but just one afterward.

Une défaite au hockey est un coup de tête en plein cœur. Une victoire est un vol parmi les étoiles. Ce soir, Ursa est au firmament.

Le problème de cette putain de ville, ce n'est pas qu'un garçon ait violé une fille, mais que tous les autres prétendent qui'l ne l'a PAS fait!

The love a parent feels for a child is strange. There is a starting point to our love for everyone else, but not this person. This one we have always loved, we loved them before they even existed. No matter how well prepared they are, all moms and dads experience a moment of total shock, when the tidal wave of feelings first washes through them, knocking them off their feet. It’s incomprehensible because there’s nothing to compare it to. It’s like trying to describe sand between your toes or snowflakes on your tongue to someone who’s lived their whole life in a dark room. It sends the soul flying.”