"Sometimes it hurts, it really hurts, for no other reason than the fact that our skin doesn’t feel like it’s ours."
Author: Fredrick Backman
Rating:
Review:
2020 was quite the year. It was only recently, when I fell down the rabbit hole that is BookTube, that I remembered how much I loved to read! When I saw that everyone was raving about a book called "Anxious People" by the author Fredrik Backman, I knew I needed to pick it up. I thought this would be a casual read, probably romantic (the cover seems like it would be a romance, but the book summary tells a different story), and I would move onto the next book without too much thought. Oh, how I was so wrong! How am I supposed to carry on as a functional human being after reading this book? How am I supposed to casually walk down the street, realize the fibers of my coat have brushed past a stranger for a single moment, and then carry on with my life as if nothing has changed?
A failed bank robber accidentally creates a hostage situation when they find themselves at an apartment showing. The hostages include a recently retired couple who spends their time fixing up apartments instead of fixing their marriage; a wealthy banker who doesn't care about anyone but herself; a young couple about to have their first child but can’t seem to agree on anything; an 87-year-old woman who doesn't seem to be scared of a pistol; a real estate agent who is determined to make a deal on the apartment no matter the situation; and a man in a bunny costume who has locked himself in the only bathroom of the apartment. Mix them all together and you have the world’s worst combination of hostages. None of them are who they appear to be, the bank robber included. Each of them begins to reveal truths about themselves that set in motion a chain of events so unexpected that they can hardly explain what happens next. Anxious People is a story about the power of friendship, forgiveness, and hope: the things that can save us, even in the most anxious of times.
Fredrik Backman’s writing is stunning. It takes a while to get used to the structure, but I promise he keeps you on your toes and you will never want to put the book down. Some chapters are half a page, some a paragraph, and some multiple pages. They skip around the timeline of the events that occurred on December 30th, as well as sections from our character’s pasts. It felt like a murder mystery but without the murder. Each chapter basically ends on a cliffhanger - some clue that helps us understand how our hostages eventually get out of this sticky situation - that thrusts you into the next chapter. You think you know what is going on, but as soon as more details are revealed, you realize you know as little about what is going on as the policeman outside the apartment where our hostages are being held.
Another aspect of Fredrik Backman’s writing that makes it so personal is the use of “you” and “people.” Many chapters in the book are directed towards the reader, posing hypothetical situations that help explain what the characters in our book are going through by putting you in their shoes. Not everything he says is cheerful, often criticizing you and the hostages for being “idiots'' and sharing how humans destroy each other and themselves because of anxiety. But there are moments where we are reminded of how amazing humans can be and how there is good in everyone even if it may not seem like it on the surface. A concept that is mentioned a few times in the book and carries on until the last page is “Stockholm Syndrome,” a psychological condition that was coined in a 1973 bank robbery where four bank workers were taken hostage and bonded with their captors. In Anxious People, Backman takes that concept a little further to include us (the reader), all of our anxieties, and our empathy for everyone that comes with being a human being.
There are a lot of characters in Anxious People. Usually, when I read books with lots of characters, I tend to get confused and become detached from them, as I’m sure many of you do with films/shows/books. However, Backman organizes each character's story so that they flawlessly merge together in the end. Whether it is the bank robber or 87-year-old Estelle, there is a character or character trait that everyone can relate to. It might not seem like it at first because all we know about our characters in the first third of the book is surface level and superficial. Once a few hours pass in the apartment, you will discover that you have more in common with each character than you think. When an author makes me feel like I lived a lifetime with these characters in a 355-page book, it is my civil duty to share that book with the rest of the world.
The end of the book was really one of the best endings I have ever read. In my opinion, writing the ending of a book is one of the hardest aspects of the whole process. The idea is there in the beginning but trying to wrap up the ending in a way that makes me want to read more from the author is super hard to do. Fredrik Backman, however, had me crying for the last 20 pages of this book. It is an emotional rollercoaster from start to end, and the ending really gets you good. I promise they were happy tears.
If there is one thing to take from Anxious People, it is that you are not alone in this world. Yes, we can be idiots sometimes, but we have to remember that it is “idiotically difficult” to be a human sometimes. Anxious People has become one of my favorite books of all time because I felt seen while reading. Frederick Backman hasn’t met me, but he understands me, and he understands you too.
There are SO MANY good quotes in this book, and even if you aren’t going to read Anxious People, you must read these!
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.
Our hearts are bars of soap that we keep losing hold of; the moment we relax, they drift off and fall in love and get broken, all in the wink of an eye.
Sometimes it hurts, it really hurts, for no other reason than the fact that our skin doesn’t feel like it’s ours.
Because you’ve probably been depressed yourself, you’ve had days when you’ve been in terrible pain in places that don’t show up in X-rays, when you can’t find the words to explain it even to the people who love you. Deep down, in memories that we might prefer to suppress even from ourselves, a lot of us know that the difference between us and that man on the bridge is much smaller than we might wish.
“Do you know what the worst thing about being a parent is? That you’re always judged by your worst moments. You can do a million things right, but if you do one single thing wrong you’re forever that parent who was checking his phone in the park when your child was hit in the head by a swing.”
She said you can't protect your kids from life, because life gets us all in the end.
That’s an impossible thing for sons to grasp, and a source of shame for fathers to have to admit: that we don't want our children to pursue their own dreams or walk in our footsteps. We want to walk in their footsteps while they pursue our dreams.
“We can't change the world, and a lot of the time we can't even change people. No more than one bit at a time. So we do what we can to help whenever we get the chance, sweetheart. We save those we can. We do our best. Then we try to find a way to convince ourselves that that will just have to… be enough. So we can live with our failures without drowning.”
“I believe the one that says that if you do it for long enough, it can become impossible to tell the difference between flying and falling.”
“God doesn't protect people from knives, sweetheart. That's why God gave us other people, so we can protect each other.”
“To die will be an awfully big adventure.” Maybe for the person doing it, Estelle thought, but not for the one who was left behind.
It's such an odd thing, the way you can know someone so perfectly through what they read.
“There’s something romantic about the thought of all the apartments that aren’t for sale.”
“The cinema. Maybe. If you’d like that.”
They go and see something made up. Because people need stories, too, sometimes.
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 were more than the mistakes we made yesterday. That we are all of our next choices, too, all of our tomorrows.
But when you get home this evening, when this day is over and the night takes us, allow yourself a deep breath. Because we made it through this day as well. There’ll be another one along tomorrow. (the entire last chapter of the book is gorgeous)
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