Author Backman Serves Up a Scintillating Dose of High Anxiety

By Michael Malone

Fredrik Backman’s “Anxious People” is set at an apartment showing outside of Stockholm. Eight strangers are checking out the top-floor flat, which has a nice view of a bridge, when a person with a gun bursts in. There was a failed bank robbery, and the gun-wielder is now holding the eight people hostage.

As the novel progresses, the hostages get to know the robber. And so do we.

The robber is poorly suited for a life of crime. They’ve attempted to hold up a bank that does not deal in cash. (Like the robber, I did not know such banks existed.) They are a pretty regular person who’s been dealt a foul hand in life, and made a desperate decision that was not a smart one.

The hostages get to like the bank robber. And so do we.

“Anxious People” is an offbeat story to say the least. It is a purposely claustrophobic novel, nine people stuck in a cozy apartment. Attempting to free the hostages, and apprehend the bank robber, are police officers Jim and Jack, who are father and son, and have the kinds of issues that fathers and sons often do.

With humor interspersed and alongside dramatic moments and illuminating observations of human nature, “Anxious People” reminded me of Nick Hornby’s “A Long Way Down,” which also puts a gaggle of strangers in a constrained space high above the Earth. In that novel, four people meet one another atop a building that is notorious for those who pitch themselves off it.

“A Long Way Down” is set on New Year’s Eve. “Anxious People” takes place the day before New Year’s Eve (New Year’s Eve Eve, perhaps?), and also touches on the tricky topic of suicide.

One of those stuck in the apartment is Zara, a hardened bank manager who dealt with an investor who loses his life savings, blames the bank and leaps from a bridge.

Days later, a teen girl mounts the bridge with the same plan in mind, but is saved by a random teen boy. The girl grows up to be a psychologist, and the boy grows to be a police officer. Both are key characters in “Anxious People.”

Backman is a gifted storyteller. If you haven’t read his hockey novel “Beartown,” you definitely should. If you haven’t read its follow-up “Us Against You,” you absolutely should. If you haven’t read the third part in the Beartown series, “The Winners,” it may be because it is 671 pages, and you have a weekly book review column that is not conducive to books with 671 pages.

At least that’s my excuse.

Backman also wrote “A Man Called Ove.” The movie version has Tom Hanks in it. A Swede, he has a vast oeuvre of very good novels. And he’s just 42.

“Anxious People” moves fast. The book has 74 chapters across 340 pages, so some chapters are but a page or two, and none are long. The novel, published in 2019, has averaged a 4.18 rating out of 5 on GoodReads.

The Washington Post said the book “captures the messy essence of being human…It’s clever and affecting, as likely to make you laugh out loud as it is to make you cry.”

Backman writes of the teen girl on the bridge:

“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?’”

It is notable that a book about hostages warming up to their captor is set outside Stockholm. Of course, Stockholm Syndrome is the name given to that situation, stemming from a failed bank robbery in the city in 1973.

Backman has some fun with Stockholm. “Anxious People” is set in the suburbs, and the residents there are tired of big-city people telling them how to do things, and living their non-traditional, maybe even weird lifestyles. When word gets out that a bank robber has hostages in the apartment building, the Stockholm police get on the road to sort stuff out, not trusting yokels like Jim and Jack to solve the crime.

The Jim-Jack relationship is a fun one. Backman writes:

“You’re a good police officer, son,” Jim will say, looking down at the ground. He’ll want to add but an even better person, but won’t be able to bring himself to say it.

“You’re not always such a damn good police officer, Dad,” Jack will grin up to the clouds. He’ll want to add but I’ve learned everything else from you, but the words won’t quite come out.”

The humor doesn’t always work. When Jim and Jack interrogate witnesses of the attempted bank robbery and hostage situation, some are just too rude and terrible to be believable. The book’s title is fine, but not as strong as the narrative.

Indeed, Backman delivers just the right verbiage time and again, and his prose is never more impactful than near the novel’s end. As a struggling mother reads a fairy tale written by her young daughter, she is moved, and you might be too.

He writes:

“When the mom read the last words of the story, her daughters were just starting to wake up on their mattresses, and everything that was worth anything inside of her shattered.”

“Anxious People” reminds us all to have a bit more empathy. The person driving you nuts, be it your spouse or the sluggish pedestrian in front of you on the sidewalk, may just be going through a tough time.

Cut ‘em a bit of slack.

Journalist Michael Malone lives in Hawthorne with his wife and two children.