Anxious People by Fredrik Backman

Anxious People

 Book ID:

Title : Anxious People

Author : Fredrik Backman

Year  Published :  September 2020

Genre : Fiction, Humaniora

Languange : English

Publisher : Atria Books

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Looking at real estate isn’t usually a life-or-death situation, but an apartment open house becomes just that when a failed bank robber bursts in and takes a group of strangers hostage. The captives include a recently retired couple who relentlessly hunt down fixer-uppers to avoid the painful truth that they can’t fix their own marriage. There’s a wealthy bank director who has been too busy to care about anyone else and a young couple who are about to have their first child but can’t seem to agree on anything, from where they want to live to how they met in the first place. Add to the mix an eighty-seven-year-old woman who has lived long enough not to be afraid of someone waving a gun in her face, a flustered but still-ready-to-make-a-deal real estate agent, and a mystery man who has locked himself in the apartment’s only bathroom, and you’ve got the worst group of hostages in the world.

Each of them carries a lifetime of grievances, hurts, secrets, and passions that are ready to boil over. None of them is entirely who they appear to be. And all of them—the bank robber included—desperately crave some sort of rescue. As the authorities and the media surround the premises these reluctant allies will reveal surprising truths about themselves and set in motion a chain of events so unexpected that even they can hardly explain what happens next.

 

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Ever since a Man Called Ove, Backman is one of my favorite authors that still productively writing, so whenever I saw his new books in the best sellers row, I am happily purchased them.

Looking at the cover, Anxious People is certainly one of the typical covers of Backman. Someone's back with big fonts showing the Author's name. Maybe to emphasize, this is Backman's creation, hard to miss it.

 

Anxious people are about a group of anxious people, hostage, and apartment-viewing events. With the seems-so-simple- premise, the author creates an interesting not-gonna-stop-reading 300ish pages. Can you imagine it? Boy, surely Backman a maestro of writing.

 

On New Year Eve, anxious people tried to rob a bank, pointing a gun and requesting a specific small amount of money, to a digital banking hall. Yes, a digital banking hall, that of course didn't keep enough petty cash in their fault.

 

 The robber tried to run away thru an apartment and was trapped in an apartment unit that conducting- apartment view day. Pointing the gun, the robber demands everyone in the room to listen but....these are a group of most difficult persons.

 

First Zara, a successful banker in her 50's. Smart but very tough character. She's just found a new hobby, seeing the middle class want to purchase a home. Zara is too affluent to buy that apartment. And currently, she's dealing with a psychiatrist that refuses to give her a sleeping pill.

 

Julia and Ro, a couple expecting a child in Julia's belly. Ro is a very beautiful woman but having difficulty sticking to one hobby. She always has an obsession that changes every 3 months. Her wife, Julia, is a woman who loves confrontation. So brave but always has unique insult to every person.

 

Then, Anna Lenna and her husband, Roger. A spouse at the end of their love tunnel. Anne is successful carrier woman that needs to tone down her achievement to make her husband happy. The husband just retired and tried to find a project together with her wife, to keep going in their life. They keep purchase apartment at a low price, renovate them and sell it for margin.

 

Estelle, an almost a hundred-year-old woman that almost invisible to everyone. She's so kind but now dealing with her loneliness.

 

And there is an uninvited guest, a man with a rabbit head that also complicated everything.

The story narrated back and forth. The progressive plot narrated about how the cops interviewed each witness to match the story of how the robber runaway. The cops are a father and son, Jack and Jim.

 

Jim is a loving father that has no similarity in taste or behavior as his son, Jack. But he loves Jack very much and wanting to do anything to protect his son. Especially, after his wife died.

 

Jack is smart, tough, and kindhearted. Once when he was a teenager, he cannot save a man that wants to suicide by jump off the bridge. It scarred him, but he managed to save a girl and after that, he swore to become a cop, to save humankind. 

 

But everyone is battling with their war. They are anxious people but deep down, they want to be part of the goodness in mankind. Pair of cops that want to solve the runaway robbery, and a group of witnesses that hard to be interviewed.

 

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. -chapter 71

 

Their heart, is not the one who appeared in the surface. Us, human have a very complex emotions that sometime, only able to showcase one emotion that comfort us the most.

 

I must say, that this book is very good, very well written. Always Backman, bringing the issue of our humanity, asking us the core of goodness and badness. So many characters that developed and distinguished well, so many witty and sarcastic conversations that tried to tone down the heaviness issue in this book. But, I have not enjoyed it as much as the other books.

 

I am not quite sure how to point it out, maybe the characterizations. How can so many 'idiots' gather in one place, even they did a good deed. But reading the conversations exchange between them, made me want to smack their smug face. It is literally like reading twit-war.

 

But don't be discouraged because of me. I assure you, it is a very good book, touched your heart and made you question everything that you've done to make the world a better place like Michael Jackson's song.

It is still enjoyable read!