Anxious People

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Manufacturer: Fredrik Backman
Brand: Fiction
Brew: Paperback
Steeping Time: 390 pages
Tea Service: Book Club
Strength:

Synopsis: It’s New Year’s Eve and House Tricks estate agents are showing people around an upmarket apartment when an incompetent bank robber rushes in and politely takes everyone hostage.

For Anna-Lena and Roger, busy buying-up apartments to fill the hole in their marriage, it’s something else to talk about.

For Julia and Ro, panicky parents-to-be, it’s yet another worry.

Lonely bank manager Zara only came here for the view.

While 87-year-old grandmother Estelle seems rather pleased by the company . . .

As the police gather outside, the anxious strangers huddled within try to make the best of a very sticky situation.
But could it be that they have a whole lot more in common than meets the eye?

Honestly, y’all. Fredrik Backman can do no wrong in my eyes. Even when he introduces incredibly irritating characters right out the gate.

This is my third Fredrik Backman book, so I kind of know what to expect from him now. The first book of his that I read was My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She’s Sorry and the second was A Man Called Ove. I absolutely adored both of these, and Anxious People is no different.

Backman has an incredible knack for writing flawed characters that might drive you nuts in the beginning, but by the end of the book, you can see past the first impression to who they really are. Every book I’ve read of his has left me with the same life lesson by the end. You never know what someone is struggling with or what they’ve been through. You may not like the exterior, but if you can dig past that, you’ll usually find someone who’s just like you. Everyone has issues. Everyone has flaws. Everyone hurts. Some people handle it better than others, but we’re all here fighting the same battle on the same planet. We’re all just trying to live.

I loved so many of the characters in Anxious People, just as I have with Backman’s other books.

There was one character in particular that I didn’t like at all, and by the end of the book, I still didn’t like her but I understood her. Understanding someone goes a long way, even if they’re still not your favorite person at the end of the day.

Another thing that I love about Backman is his writing style. We tend to jump around a lot when we read, which I enjoy. There is a lot of this in Anxious People. We go from the police station to interviews to the apartment to ten years ago, then back to the police station, back to the apartment, jump over to someone else’s past, and so on. I never get bored with a book by Backman.

I found the pacing steady, not particularly slow or fast. I enjoyed all of the character development and the growth that we see throughout the story. I also love seeing how everyone is connected. We do live in a small world, after all, and Anxious People illustrates that beautifully.

We read this for book club, and out of five members, three of us gave it a 5 cuppa rating.

More than half of the club agreeing on something is pretty rare, so I think that’s a pretty good sign for Anxious People! Two of us, myself included, debated between 4 and 5 cuppas (stars), but in the end, we couldn’t come up with a reason to not give it 5 cuppas. It’s a wonderfully woven story that is funny, touching, heartbreaking, and uplifting all wrapped into one.

Have you read Anxious People? Leave a comment and let me know what you thought about it! Want to read it for yourself? Click here to get a copy of your own.
Cheers,
Lydia