Book Review
Title: Anxious People by Fredrik Backman
Genre: Crime, Mystery, Humour
Rating: 4.5 Stars
I didn’t know anything about Anxious People before reading it but when the synopsis mentioned a failed bank robbery, a hostage situation and a mystery I knew I had to pick it up. This novel is told in a rather strange way where you are bouncing back forth in time as well as between different events but everything makes sense. We learn of a bank robbery that failed and in an attempt to escape the police the robber entered an apartment that was currently being shown to seven people. The seven prospective buyers and the real estate agents are now being held hostage by the bank robber. When he finally lets them go the police hear a single gun shot but when they enter the apartment there is blood but no body that means either the robber is still hiding in the apartment which is unlikely or he escaped. However, all the windows are closed and the balcony doors are locked meaning that one of the hostages must have helped the robber. We are introduced to two of the police men, Jim and Jack who are father and son, when Jack was a child he saw a man planning to jump off a bridge and tried to help him only for him to jump anyway which continues to haunt Jack. However, he became a police officer not because of the man but because of a girl on the same bridge the following week, the one he convinced not to jump. As they interview the hostages it becomes clear that someone is lying or not telling the whole truth as the events don’t add up and the narrator confirms this.
As we approach the ¼ mark in the novel, I was already invested in the mystery of the disappearing robber and couldn’t wait to see it unravel over the course of the novel. The first interview we get to read is between Jack and London. London is an employee at the bank that the robber attempted to rob only to be told by London that it was a cashless bank and when London informs the robber she is going to call the police, he panics and flees straight into the apartment. However, London does mention that the robber asked for a very specific and quite small amount of money meaning there must have been a special reason behind the robbery and the mysterious child’s drawing they found in the stairwell might have something to do with the robber’s intentions for robbing the bank. We learn more about the bank robber’s life without learning his identity, it turns out what he is divorced after he found out his wife had been sleeping with his boss for some time. As they worked together, he quickly found himself homeless and unemployed and when his wife files for divorce she also applies for sole custody of their two daughter because he has nowhere to live and no job. He tries to get a loan from the bank but is rejected sleeping rough for a little while until a cheap apartment comes for rent and he managed to scrape together the first month’s rent. During that month he manages to find a job but won’t get paid for two month and when his landlord tells him if he doesn’t pay rent on that day he decided to go out and rob a bank for one month’s rent. As we zoom in and out of the bigger picture we now know the robber and begin to get to know some of the hostage. The first is Zara, she runs a bank and on the day of the viewing found that she was the wealthiest person there by a long shot but she isn’t happy. Zara we soon learn is seeing a psychiatrist because she is having trouble sleeping and her doctor recommended this before he will think about prescribing drugs for her. Quickly she builds a relationship with the psychiatrist but it seems that Zara can read her a lot easier than she can read Zara but her unhappiness and bitterness is very obvious and you don’t really need to analyse her to see it. However, we know the robber was friendly and polite during the hostage situation and Zara is possibly the person linked to the man who jumped from the bridge. That man lost all his money in the financial crash and when he went to a second bank for a loan and was rejected, he wrote a letter to the woman that rejected him which she carried around for over a decade before meeting the bank robber and presumably she might feel guilty for her role in that man’s death which might have caused her to help the robber and lie to the police about it but there are still 6 other people we haven’t met yet besides the estate agent and Zara.
As we cross the ¼ mark in the novel, we learn that Zara has never opened the letter from the man that jumped from the bridge but since then she has developed an obsession with watching the bridge. A week after that man died, she witnesses a young girl climb over the railing only to be saved by Jack, that girl is Nadia whose life Zara has followed closely at that same young girl is now her psychiatrist. That event changed both Nadia and Jack’s lives as he decided to become a policeman and it shifted something in Nadia too giving her the drive she needed to move herself forward but she has never forgotten it even if she was never able to meet the boy who changed her life. We are also introduced to 4 other hostages, two couple, one older, Anna-Lena and Roger, and one younger, Julia and Ro. Julia is also heavily pregnant at the time of the viewing, both couples have the fact that neither of them is happy in common. Anna-Lena and Roger have recently retired and have grown distant over the years while Julia and Ro have communication issues. This mainly because Ro has a short attention span always moving from one hobby to the next and doesn’t seem to worry about the issues that are going to arise with having a child, while Julia is determined to find a home suitable for their child all Ro can think of is how she can change the apartment to suit her needs. However, she seems to find issues with every apartment they have been to indicating that she doesn’t want to move and ultimately Julia snaps at her moments before the bank robber runs through the door. Everyone seems to agree that the viewing was a disaster from the beginning as the real estate agent seemed very amateur during the viewing and that comes across in the interviews, while everyone else had different reasons for being there. Zara for example wasn’t looking to buy the apartment but just want to admire the view of the bridge she has been obsessed with for ten years from the apartment.
As we approach the halfway mark in the novel, I was enjoying the story but I did want it to move a bit quicker. We are being introduced to the final couple of people relevant to the story, the first is Estelle, a nearly 90 year old woman looking at the apartment for her daughter and she is the only one that attempts to speak with the robber during his time in the apartment while everyone else is busy bickering among themselves. During this time the robber learns the names of everyone there and even begins to know some of the friendlier people like Ro, however, she lets slip that there seems to be someone locked in the bathroom which the robber hadn’t noticed before. These scenes are really comical as you have a flustered failed bank robber trying to figure out what to do next among 8 people bickering over the apartment, the situation, their lives and just about everything else which only makes the situation worse. We are introduced to the final person in the apartment, Lennart, who is a professional disturber, meaning his job is to make disturbance at viewings like this one in order for his employer to get the property at a lower price. Lennart was hired by Anna-Lena to make her husband feel important as their marriage has stagnated over the years. However, during the following scenes a lot of the hostages find that they have things in common with each other and the robber begins to open up to them about the motives behind robbing the bank and seems to get a lot of the sympathy from the hostages. There are constant references made to the closet because the plans for the apartment are incorrect meaning it is bigger than the plans state and I think I have figured out what is going on.
As we cross the halfway mark in the novel, the interviews are continuing but neither Jack or Jim can figure out how the bank robber got away especially after being shot and losing a lot of blood. However, when Jack learns that the closet is bigger than the plans suggests he returns to the apartment with his father in order to search it again. There the find a hidden crawl space in the closet where Lennart’s rabbit head but it is closed off at the other meaning the robber couldn’t have escaped that way. While they are there Jack beings replaying all the events over and over in his mind and realises that everyone has been saying there were nine people in the apartment, the 7 buyers, the real estate agent and the robber but when they ordered pizzas they only ordered eight. Jack believes that there was no ninth person and the real estate agent is the robber and they rush back to the station. During the hostage situation we learn that the robber isn’t the father as I assumed but the mother although I have no idea what is going on here or why the mother is there when it is hinted at that it is the father for the majority of this novel. Upon returning to the police station, Jack confronts the supposed real estate agent with what he believes to be the truth. Honestly, Anxious People is turning out to be a book that has taken me by surprise as I wasn’t expecting this to be a funny or insightful as it is turning out to be. I really like how we constantly zoom in and out between the individual lives of the characters and the bigger picture as a whole but we are only shown small snippets of the big picture meaning we have to fill the blanks ourselves and most of the time we turn out to be completely wrong as I was.
As we approach the ¾ mark in the novel, I thought the novel was going to be winding down now the police had seemingly figured the mystery but that isn’t the end of the mystery yet. It turns out there were actually nine people in the apartment as the real estate agent hid in the crawl space where they found Lennart’s rabbit head when she realised there was a robber in the apartment but the hatch go stuck and she couldn’t get down until the others freed her. That still leaves us with the mystery of what the hell happened to the robber after the hostages were released and I can’t wait to see how that plays out. In the meantime, the hostages and the robber have gotten to know each other with Lennart and Zara making a possible romantic connection while the two couples have accidently helped each other with the issues they have been facing and the whole while the robber doesn’t seem to be doing much except observing what is happening around her and frequently declares them to be the worst hostages ever. For a time Estelle, Julia and Anna-Lena end up in the closet together drinking wine and smoking, although Julia doesn’t take part because she is pregnant. Estelle confesses during this time that she feels sorry for the robber and the others feel the same and that they should do something to help her. Estelle comes up with the idea of walking the robber out with them disguised as the estate agent as the real estate agent hasn’t been present this whole time but I am not sure that plan is going to work now that the real estate agent has been found. However, when Lennart answers the door to receive the pizzas that they asked for, he posing as the robber makes the demand for fireworks before the hostages are released which baffles me but no mention has been made of these fireworks in the present and this might just be used to cover up the robber’s escape. The mystery surrounding the robber only seems to be getting deeper and deeper despite us moving closer towards the end of the novel and I can’t wait to see how it ends.
As we cross into the final section of the novel, everything finally comes together and the author manages to flip the story he has been telling us on its head while filling in the blanks that tug at your heartstrings and really make you love the characters. We get to see all of these characters come together in different ways but honestly my favourite we Estelle and the robber, Zara and Lennart and Jack and Nadia. I would honestly read a sequel to this just following up on what happened to the characters are the end of this novel but that wasn’t the point of this book. This book is all about the characters and why they are the people they are and how they form new relationships and bonds even under the absolutely strangest of circumstances. Honestly, Jim’s role in the book was beautiful and the compassion the characters showed towards each other even the cynical Zara was just beautiful to read about and I highly, highly recommend this book and I will definitely be checking out more of Backman’s books in the future.
Buy it here:
Paperback/Hardcover: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
Kindle Edition: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
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