Book Review: Anxious People
Book Title: Anxious People
Author: Fredrik Backman
Purchase: Amazon
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Description from Goodreads:
A poignant, charming novel about a crime that never took place, a would-be bank robber who disappears into thin air, and eight extremely anxious strangers who find they have more in common than they ever imagined
Looking at real estate isn't usually a life-or-death situation, but an apartment open house becomes just that when a failed bank robber bursts in and takes a group of strangers hostage. The captives include a recently retired couple who relentlessly hunt down fixer-uppers to avoid the painful truth that they can't fix up their own marriage. There's a wealthy banker who has been too busy making money to care about anyone else and a young couple who are about to have their first child but can't seem to agree on anything, from where they want to live to how they met in the first place. Add to the mix an eighty-seven-year-old woman who has lived long enough not to be afraid of someone waving a gun in her face, a flustered but still-ready-to-make-a-deal real estate agent, and a mystery man who has locked himself in the apartment's only bathroom, and you've got the worst group of hostages in the world.
Each of them carries a lifetime of grievances, hurts, secrets, and passions that are ready to boil over. None of them is entirely who they appear to be. And all of them—the bank robber included—desperately crave some sort of rescue. As the authorities and the media surround the premises, these reluctant allies will reveal surprising truths about themselves and set in a motion a chain of events so unexpected that even they can hardly explain what happens next.
Humorous, compassionate, and wise, Anxious People is an ingeniously constructed story about the enduring power of friendship, forgiveness, and hope—the things that save us, even in the most anxious of times.
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
This book did nothing for me. I wanted to like it. I really wanted to like it. A failed bank robbery and accidental hostage situation with a mystery ending? Yes, please. Comedic absurdism plus an exploration of mental health and wellness? I’m hooked!
But while the writing is solid, the characters are not. The whole strangers connected by six degrees of separation trope doesn’t work here because the connections are shoe-horned in and the characters are one-note. These quirky “idiots,” as the author lovingly refers to them, seem like overwrought caricatures—hard to believe and grating on the nerves. I sometimes flinched at the dialogue, especially the transcripts of the witness interviews with the police; even with an explanation at the end for why the hostages behave the way they do, it’s not enough to make up for how unbelievable their words and mannerisms are.
The characters are more like background actors in a Wes Anderson movie than actual people, which seems to be the exact opposite of the book’s intention based on the author’s heavy-handed message at the end on the universality of the human experience—that we’re all messes; we’re all idiots trying to make our way day in and day out; everyone has bad days. Anxious People presents itself as a relatable story of a bad day spiraling out of control, and couldn’t this happen to any of us? Can’t we all close our eyes and picture the worst case scenario if we made a series of terrible decisions?
The mystery of how the bank robber escapes seems utterly obvious, but the author attempts to subvert expectations here. Unfortunately, he doesn’t truly pull this off because the truth is both boring and, somehow… still predictable. Anyone paying attention will figure out the “twist” pretty easily. On the whole, I found the mystery entirely dissatisfying and I lost interest in what would happen about halfway through.
As for the writing, the time jumps don’t do it for me. The pacing feels all over the place; some chapters are half a page long while others are twenty pages. Sometimes we’re addressed by the narrator; sometimes we switch the character we’re following mid-chapter, which is supposedly fine because all the characters are (tenuously) connected. Eye roll.
I may sound like I hate this book but I don’t even feel that strongly. It’s just fine. I kind of like what it’s trying to do, but I think it failed in execution. I like the themes it explores, but I just can’t get over the overly “quirky” characters and predictability. I don’t believe this story. But I’ve read good things about Fredrik Backman and I would give another of his books a shot—this one may have just been a miss for me. If you’re already a fan or even if the synopsis interests you, take my words with a grain of salt and give it a try.
