Anxious People

This book tells the tale of a group of strangers viewing an apartment that is for sale who are held hostage by an inept bank robber. The humor and humanity of the situation compelled me to read this book in a weekend. The twists and turns keep the reader glued to the page. For me, any book that has you thinking about the characters long after the book has ended is worth the read.

If you think of the serious/funny ratio as being on an inverse continuum (which is a thing I did not make up, but about which I'm unsure I’m correct) then a couple of towns over from All the Pretty Horses would be Anxious People by Frederik Backman. Backman is becoming one of my very favorite authors, because he has a way of creating these intensely insufferable characters, and then making you like them. You get the entire emotional gamut when you read a Backman book – love, nostalgia, heartbreak, regret, fear – it's all on the table. These are quirky… show more.

If you have read Backman’s A Man Called Ove, you know it will be worth it to stick with this! Through a series of conversations with the police, we come to understand what is prompting this odd collection of people, thrown together when taken hostage at an apartment real estate showing, to behave oddly when interviewed by the police. Backman’s grasp of human motivation is astonishing and his ability as a writer to reveal his characters’ inner lives held my interest hostage. He took his time with letting us see how each person came to be in the apartment… show more.

If we could put all of congress in the same room for a day just as the author of Anxious People does with his characters we could imagine the great USA divide being conquered. Thanks to the forced intimacy the characters find themselves in the reader learns lush details of each character’s personality, life, and soul. Yet thanks to the forced intimacy we witness complete strangers respectfully and lovingly connecting to one another in a way that is unexpected, yet so satisfying.