Book Review: Anxious People by Fredrik Backman

Anxious People. Fredrik Backman. Simon & Schuster (2020). 341 pages. Genre: Fiction, Contemporary.

First Lines: "A bank robbery. A hostage drama. A stairwell full of police officers on their way to storm an apartment. It was easy to get to this point, much easier than you might think.  All it took was one single really bad idea."

Summary:  On the day before New Year's Eve, eight people attend an apartment viewing.  That same morning, a person who has reached a place of desperation, decides to rob a bank.  When that doesn't quite go as expected, the bank robber flees to the first available building which happens to be the apartment building holding the viewing.  Since the apartment holding the viewing is the only one that is easily accessible, the bank robber bursts in waving a pistol.  The situation has gone from being a robbery to a hostage crisis.  

My thoughts: This is the second book by Fredrik Backman that I have read.  His books leave me with mixed feelings.  So I'm going to start by telling you what I liked about this book:

*Backman is a talented writer.

*This is a unique story told in a unique way.

*Humor - there was one point near the beginning of the story when I was laughing so hard, it was a few minutes before I could keep reading.

*Bringing many of the ills of society or difficulties of the modern age to light in a humorous way.

*Quirky characters - Backman excels in seeing the quirkiness in all of us and extracting that into interesting characters. 

*Themes of love, friendship, grief, mistakes, forgiveness, second chances and hope. 

*The story ends on a positive note.

Things that cause me to have mixed feelings:

*The dark tone of the book, especially in the early part.  It gave me a feeling similar to the movie Fargo. Dark and quirky, unsettled.  This did lift as the story went on.

*Many references to suicide and suicidal thoughts.

*The obnoxiousness and choices made by some of the characters - the author does mention several times, "This is a story about a lot of things, but mostly about idiots.".  I had to keep that in mind when I was getting annoyed by some of the characters. 

This is not a story for everyone.  But, if you like quirky characters in a unique setting you might want to give this one a try.

Quotes:

"Because that was a parent's job: to provide shoulders.  Shoulders for your children to sit on when they're little so they can see the world, then stand on when they get older so they can reach the clouds, and sometimes lean against whenever they stumble and feel unsure.  They trust us, which is a crushing  responsibility, because they haven't yet realized that we don't actually know what we're doing."

"The fact that she didn't phrase her questions as 'Is this some kind of joke' but went straight for 'Are you a joke?' perhaps says a lot about the younger generation's lack of respect for older bank robbers."

"She told herself that way why you should always be nice to other people, even idiots, because you never know how heavy their burden is."

"The truth of course is that if people really were as happy as they look on the Internet, they wouldn't spend so much damn time on the Internet, because no one who's having a really good day spends half of it taking pictures of themselves."