At first glance, the main storyline of Anxious People seems simple: an apartment open house turns chaotic when a failed bank robber bursts in and accidentally takes a group of strangers hostage. But this is a Backman novel, nothing stays simple for long. He takes this quirky setup and transforms it into a story layered with empathy, absurdity, and unexpected wisdom.
As he playfully hints throughout the book, maybe this is a story about idiots. Or maybe it’s about a bridge. Or rabbits. Or love. Or perhaps it’s all of those things at once: a hostage drama, an apartment viewing, and a love story wrapped in one big, tender mess.
“The truth is that this was a story about many different things, but most of all about idiots. Because we’re doing the best we can, we really are. We’re trying to be grown-up and love each other and understand how the hell you’re supposed to insert USB leads. We’re looking for something to cling on to, something to fight for, something to look forward to. We’re doing all we can to teach our children how to swim. We have all of this in common, yet most of us remain strangers, we never know what we do to each other, how your life is affected by mine.”
While readers are still guessing what story Backman wants to tell, he shows a lovely gift for holding readers attention while quietly reminding them of life’s paradoxes, the small, funny truths that make us laugh and reflect at the same time. His witty observations often sting with irony, like this one:
“You only lend money to people who don’t really need to borrow money.”
Or this one, which feels even sharper and resonates with me personally:
“I buy distance from other people.”(..) “Expensive restaurants have bigger gaps between the tables. First class on airplanes has no middle seats. Exclusive hotels have separate entrances for guests staying in suites. The most expensive thing you can buy in the most densely populated places on the planet is distance.”
Then there are lines that softly shake me. One of my favorites:
“God doesn’t protect people from knives, sweetheart. That’s why God gave us other people, so we can protect each other.”
And yet, sometimes it’s those same “other people” who hurt us the most.
Fredrik Backman never fails to leave me in awe of his writing. The way he slips bits of comedy between poetic reflections feels almost magical. His words are wise yet effortlessly beautiful, his storytelling smooth and full of heart. Everything my reader’s soul craves, I always find in Backman’s books. Anxious People is the second one I’ve read after My Friends, and once again, he didn’t disappoint.
Backman always has a way of putting my restless thoughts about life into words, wrapping them in stories that feel both absurd and achingly real. Anxious People reminds me how small and strangely connected the world is. How people who cross paths by chance can meet again through something that feels a lot like destiny.
Anxious People is messy, funny, tender, and wise. Just like life itself.
My Favorite Bits
- They say that a person’s personality is the sum of their experiences. But that isn’t true, at least not entirely, because if our past was all that defined us, we’d never be able to put up with ourselves. We need to be allowed to convince ourselves that we’re more than the mistakes we made yesterday. That we are all of our next choices, too, all of our tomorrows.
- 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. Anyone can nurture a myth about their life if they have enough manure, so if the grass looks greener on the other side of the fence, that’s probably because it’s full of shit.
- That’s the power of literature, you know, it can act like little love letters between two people who can only explain their feelings by pointing at other people’s.
- Because the terrible thing about becoming an adult is being forced to realize that absolutely nobody cares about us, we have to deal with everything ourselves now, find out how the whole world works. (..). We open our eyes in the morning and life is just waiting to tip a fresh avalanche of “Don’t forget!”s and “Remember!”s over us. We don’t have time to think or breathe, we just wake up and start digging through the heap, because there will be another one dumped on us tomorrow. (..). But we weren;t ready to become adults. Someone should have stopped us.
- 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. Especially if you have other people you’re trying to be a reasonably good human being for.
- She said you can’t protect your kids from life, because life gets us all in the end.
- It just hurts so much at times, being human. Not understanding yourself, not liking the body you’re stuck in. Seeing your eyes in the mirror and wondering whose they are, always with the same question: “What’s wrong with me? Why do I feel like this?
- All your life you’ve promised yourself that you’ll cope with everything. Not be a chaotic person. Not have to beg for help. (..) Right there, right then, it takes next to nothing to knock you off balance.
- It wasn’t until their third session that the psychologist realized how unwell Zara was. It was just after Zara had explained that “democracy as a system is doomed, because idiots will believe anything as long as the story’s good enough.
- That’s because people like you always look at people who are wealthier than you are and say: ‘Yes, they may be richer, but are they happy?’ As if that was the meaning of life for anyone but a complete idiot, just going around being happy all the time.
- .. she had never felt like someone who had anything in common with anyone else. She had always been entirely alone in every emotion.
- .. person who’s drowning doesn’t look like they’re drowning. “When you’re drowning you can’t call for help, you can’t wave your arms, you just sink. Your family can be standing on the beach waving cheerfully to you, completely unaware that you’re dying.”
We plant an apple tree today, even if we know the world is going to be destroyed tomorrow.
Fredrik Backman, Anxious People
Author: Fredrik Backman
Publication date: 25 April 2019
Number of pages: 336 pages
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