I've finished Fredrik Backman's Anxious People, translated from Swedish by Neil Smith. The setup sounds like a farce. A desperate first-time robber tries to hold up a bank that turns out to be cashless, panics, runs into the nearest building, and ends up taking a room full of strangers hostage at an apartment viewing. By the time the police storm the flat, the robber has vanished and the hostages are being questioned one by one, each telling a slightly different story.
The hostages are a mismatched bunch: a sharp, wealthy bank director; a retired couple who flip apartments and bicker about everything; a young couple expecting their first child and arguing about the flat; an elderly woman who seems to have wandered in by accident; a man in a rabbit costume; and an estate agent trying to keep the viewing on track. Outside are two police officers, a father and son, who can't agree on how to handle any of it. Underneath the comedy runs an older story about a bridge and a man who jumped from it ten years earlier, and that's where the book gets its weight.
Themes I Noticed
Everyone Is Struggling Quietly
- Each character turns out to be carrying something the others can't see
- The "difficult" people in the room are mostly frightened people
- Anxiety shown as an ordinary part of adult life, not a rare condition
Small Kindnesses That Matter
- Strangers end up protecting someone they have every reason to resent
- How a single conversation can change the course of someone's life
- The idea that we can't save everyone, but we can still help someone
Guilt and the Weight of the Past
- The bridge links several characters who don't know they're connected
- Living with a decision that may have contributed to someone's death
- Learning to forgive yourself for things you couldn't control
Parents and Children
- A father and son on the police force who love each other but can't communicate
- A robber doing something reckless out of fear of losing their children
- The fear of not being a good enough parent, shared by almost everyone in the book
Memorable Quotes
"Anyone can nurture a myth about their life if they have enough manure, so if the grass looks greener on the other side of the fence, that's probably because it is full of shit."
"It hurts so much at times, being human."
"One of the most human things about anxiety is that we try to cure chaos with chaos."
"Not knowing is a good place to start."
"We need to be allowed to convince ourselves that we're more than the mistakes we made yesterday."
The structure is what makes this work. Backman jumps between the hostage situation, the police interviews afterwards and the characters' pasts, so the picture keeps shifting as you learn more. People you write off in the first few chapters turn out to be the ones you care about most by the end, and the book is clearly built to do that to you on purpose.
The narrator's voice takes some getting used to. It's chatty and full of asides, and the repetition and running jokes can feel like a lot early on. But it pays off. The humour makes the heavier material about suicide, grief and loneliness easier to approach without making it feel lighter than it is.
After A Man Called Ove, this feels like Backman doing the same thing with a whole cast instead of one grumpy man: take people who look ridiculous from the outside and show you, gently, why they are the way they are. It's warm without being naive, and it ends on a hopeful note that feels earned. A good one to read when you're being too hard on yourself or on the people around you.