Anxious People: the highlight of my summer bookshelf
Title: Anxious People
Author: Fredrik Backman, translated by Neil Smith
Publisher: Atria Books
Pages: 341
My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Who will like it? Someone who likes eating soufflé, who visited a bridge in Sweden (there are 57 bridges just in Stockholm icydk), who isn’t from Stockholm (or you may be offended). OK, just kidding, no criteria. It’s sheer goodness, and you should read it just as a person.
In my humble opinion, this book redeems the bad books, the boring and exhausting ones you’ve read that made you want to give up on literature altogether. Literature is one of the few ways we can slip into the shoes of another human being we’ve never even met, and truly try to stand in their heads, and empathize with them in that moment of their lives, and begin to comprehend their perspectives without judgment. We like to say, “Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind. Always.” But living by those words, and constructing an “invisible battle” within the contents of imagination in your own head, every time you encounter someone is tedious, to say the least. Anxious People doesn’t teach you empathy pedantically, it helps you feel the meaning of that word! This book changed me on some level.
On the day before New Year’s Eve, a robber tries to rob a cashless bank, and ends up without an escape plan, holding half a dozen people present at an apartment viewing as hostages. The two policemen of this small town are so inexperienced and scramble to figure out how to approach a so-called “hostage situation”. Everyone keeps blaming trip-ups on the “Stockholmers”, the people from the capital’s police department who are too big for their own shoes, and the people out of town who invest in apartments and drive up housing prices. The whole time, Backman leaves crumbs of trails to help the reader figure out the puzzle pieces and hints at Stockholm Syndrome, named after a bank robbery in Sweden in 1973, where the hostages developed such an amicable bond with their captors, going so far that they would not testify against them in court.
Isn’t that appalling? There are moral compasses that define our conscience, and we all have fundamental ethical lines that govern our boundaries. We’d feel hostility, fear, and maybe disgust towards someone pointing a pistol at us in a ski mask, but we’re all more similar than we’d like to admit. Backman smashes the fourth wall down again and again, and keeps reminding us of how all of these lively characters on the page are just reflections of us, the readers. Even the bitter buttons like Zara, who only seems to spite people for her own amusement, has a kind heart, and she feels guilt and coldness and wants to separate herself from the world because she fears that she is a bad person. Anxious People is meta. It’s unique. It feels like a warm hug of a book, or at least a pat on the shoulder. It balances an intricate, connected plot that winds up tying together perfectly, and moments of flooding emotion, where big truths are dropped onto the page without a cloak concealing anything. It also reminds you of the good of all people, and the good of the world.
Good? Bad? What is good or bad? “A hero would sacrifice you for the world. A villain would sacrifice the world for you.” Are the cops the good people? How about priests, they must be morally perfect, isn’t that right? Bank robbers, those are bad. We’ve read about them ever since our picture dictionary days. They hurt people. They violate rights. They belong in prison. Psychologists aren’t human after all, they’re these souls with pristine relationships with their own mothers, just like how a good mechanic always ought to have a smoothly-running car. Anxious People calls all of that out in such an unforced and genuine way, and blurs the lines between good and evil, because we all just come down to being regular folks.
All of these people are just silly, imperfect, normal idiots giving life their best shot, and trying their best to just cling on in a chaotic world. And as difficult as every single day is, they have the courage to get back up and make it through to the next day. A person doesn’t have to be happy all of the time, they just need to be happy enough of the time, and I felt a flush of relief the moment I heard these words. I decided in the backseat of the car, staring at the roads that I was happy enough of the time, and I had a lot to be happy for, and I didn’t need to aim for a utopian happiness.
Backman’s writing is phenomenal in both senses of the word — “very remarkable; extraordinary” and “perceptible by the senses or through immediate experience” — and Anxious People — oh this book is so intriguing and there’s not much more I could have asked for. Backman makes you believe in imperfect true love, and he portrays relationships entirely and perfectly, whether the conflict and love between generations and in married couples, or a split second of the unknowing brushing of fibres on coats between strangers. Chef’s kiss. Anxious People’s multiplex characters and its engrossing plot, with comic relief in every other paragraph, are tastefully done. I laughed out loud multiple times when I listened to the audiobook narrated by Marin Ireland. I’m so glad I heard her read it, because so much of the book is delivered through dialogue, and seeing the words spread on the page would just not be the same. She does the voices and makes the book that much more lively and jovial, and the character’s personalities shine through emphatically. I’m lucky to have heard this book, the full 10 hours of it narrated by a human being, telling me a story about human beings.
