The Best Novel of 2022

Not surprisingly—at least for the few people who read my periodic fiction reviews, a topic that’s less popular than interminable analyses of Sardinia’s GDP—my favorite book of 2022 was from the prolific 41-year-old Swedish author Fredrik Backman. The Winners, the final installment of his mesmerizing “Beartown” trilogy, is a complex story that uses (over the nearly 1600 pages in the three books; the first two are Beartown and Us Against You) the all-consuming hockey rivalry between neighboring towns Beartown and Hed as its centerpiece.