Anxious People

 By Fredrik Backman

Atria Books     2020

352 pages     Literary

As Fredrik Backman asserts at the beginning of Anxious People, “This story is about a lot of things, but mostly about idiots. So it needs saying from the outset that it’s always very easy to declare that other people are idiots, but only if you forget how idiotically difficult being human is.”

I had just begun reading Anxious People when a book club friend said that she hated the book and couldn’t wait to finish it. “Too much stupid stuff happening in one day.” I, on the other hand, was laughing my head off at the ridiculous stuff that was happening, and the character study that was emerging.

An apartment-viewing goes horribly wrong on the day before New Year’s Eve in a small Swedish town. A bank robber had just tried to rob a cashless bank. Confused and scared, the robber ran into a neighboring apartment building where a viewing is in progress. The robber proceeds to hold all the viewers hostage. Besides the realtor, there is an older couple who buy and sell apartments, a young Lesbian couple looking for a home before their baby is born, a middle-aged well-to-do woman, and an old woman whose husband is parking the car. A father and son pair of policemen are first on the scene. What transpires is both hysterically funny and very introspective. And—oh yes—a bridge across the road from the apartment building plays a crucial role in the plot.

Backman is a master of creating interesting characters. We grow to know all the characters intimately, including their back stories, the reasons why they were viewing this particular apartment, and why they are such idiots. He has written several best sellers, including A Man Called Ove, My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She’s Sorry, Britt-Marie was Here, and Beartown. Tom Hanks is going to star in the American movie version of A Man Called Ove. I am not sure that I have read many books where the characters are so well-defined and interesting. His commentary about human nature in the first chapter of Anxious People is only matched by his closing comments, when he thanks all the people who influenced the creation of the book.

Apparently suicide is something Backman has pondered in several of  his books, and I was especially taken by this quote: “So we learn to pretend, all the time, about our jobs and our marriages and our children and everything else. We pretend we’re normal. . . Sometimes it hurts, it really hurts, for no other reason than the fact that our skin doesn’t feel like it’s ours. Sometimes we panic because the bills need paying and we have to be grown-up and we don’t know how, because it’s so horribly, desperately easy to fail at being grown-up.”

My book club had a lively discussion about Anxious People last night. We talked about characters, motivation, and the idiocy of the entire scenario. We all felt that Anxious People was a remarkable book. This morning one club member sent everyone this article, which we all felt, explained Backman’s gifts. The author says “ All of Backman’s books focus on the amazingly complicated, beautiful, funny, unexpected, and sometimes tragic experience that we call life while featuring quirky characters that try to do their best at living it. That’s exactly where the magic of these books lies.”

I also appreciated the review in USA Today. Apparently Anxious People has been optioned for a movie. It should be great!