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Anxious People: A Novel by [Fredrik Backman]

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Fredrik Backman

Anxious People: A Novel Kindle Edition

by Fredrik Backman (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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Instant #1 New York Times Bestseller

A People Book of the Week, Book of the Month Club selection, and Best of Fall in Good Housekeeping, PopSugar, TheWashington Post, New York Post, Shondaland, CNN, and more!

“[A] quirky, big-hearted novel…Wry, wise, and often laugh-out-loud funny, it’s a wholly original story that delivers pure pleasure.” —People

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Man Called Ove comes a charming, poignant novel about a crime that never took place, a would-be bank robber who disappears into thin air, and eight extremely anxious strangers who find they have more in common than they ever imagined.

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.

Rich with Fredrik Backman’s “pitch-perfect dialogue and an unparalleled understanding of human nature” (Shelf Awareness), Anxious People is an ingeniously constructed story about the enduring power of friendship, forgiveness, and hope—the things that save us, even in the most anxious times.

Print length

349 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Atria Books
Publication date

September 8, 2020
File size

2331 KB
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Popular Highlights in this book

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Addicts are addicted to their drugs, and their families are addicted to hope.
Highlighted by 4,136 Kindle readers
We don’t have a plan, we just do our best to get through the day, because there’ll be another one coming along tomorrow.
Highlighted by 3,951 Kindle readers
At the end of your career you’re trying to find a point to it all, and at the start of it you’re looking for a purpose.
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From the Publisher

Amazon.com Review

An Amazon Best Book of September 2020: An everyday apartment open house becomes the stage for Backman’s latest novel, when a bank robber bursts in and takes a group of strangers hostage. As the title hints, each member of the group bares his or her own anxieties, not just about the hostage situation, but about their individual lives. Backman is a funny, charming story teller, and Anxious People is a fine showcase for his talents as a writer. There are twists and surprises. There are editorial asides. Beneath it all, there is a deep sense of warmth and empathy. Backman is particularly gifted at creating a community of memorable characters and opening up their mental states to readers. And many readers of Anxious People will in turn reflect on their own anxieties. Ultimately, Backman seems to be telling us that—though it be a messy, ambiguous world we inhabit—we can turn toward one another to find calm and assurance. This is a novel that can, and should, be embraced by anxious people everywhere. –Chris Schluep, Amazon Book Review

Review

“Backman again 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.” —Washington Post

“Backman’s latest novel hits the sweet spot between profoundly insightful and preposterously funny….I hugged this book tightly with a smile on my face and tears in my eyes.” –USA Today

“The perfect balance of heartwarming and heart-wrenching, and Fredrik Backman has a way of simply yet elegantly describing relationships. We can all be idiots, but we’re still all human beings worthy of connection and love.” –NPR

“A brilliant and comforting read.” —Matt Haig, bestselling author of The Midnight Library

“An endlessly entertaining mood booster.” —Real Simple

"This book examines how a shared event can change the course of many lives at once. And if you like strongly drawn characters and a mix of humor and heartbreak, this one's for you.” –The Skimm

"[A] witty, lighthearted romp...Backman charms." —Publishers Weekly

"Wry, wise and often laugh-out-loud funny, it’s a wholly original story that delivers pure pleasure.” —People

“A deeply funny and warm examination of how individual experiences can bring a random group of people together. Backman reveals each character’s many imperfections with tremendous empathy, reminding us that people are always more than the sum of their flaws.” —BookPage

"[A] tight-knit, surprise-filled narrative... the brisk, absorbing action prompts meditation on marriage, parenting, responsibility, and global economic pressures. Comedy, drama, mystery, and social study, this novel is undefinable except for the sheer reading pleasure it delivers. Highly recommended."—Library Journal (starred review)

“Backman’s latest novel focuses on how a shared event can change the course of multiple people’s lives even in times of deep and ongoing anxiousness. A story with both comedy and heartbreak sure to please Backman fans.” —Kirkus Review

“Funny, compassionate and wise...an absolute joy.” —AJ Pearce, author of Dear Mrs. Bird

About the Author

Fredrik Backman is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Man Called Ove, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry, Britt-Marie Was Here, Beartown, Us Against You, and Anxious People, as well as two novellas and one work of nonfiction. His books are published in more than forty countries. He lives in Stockholm, Sweden, with his wife and two children. Connect with him on Facebook and Twitter @BackmanLand and on Instagram @Backmansk.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1 1
A bank robbery. A hostage drama. A stairwell full of police officers on their way to storm an apartment. It was easy to get to this point, much easier than you might think. All it took was one single really bad idea.

This story is about a lot of things, but mostly about idiots. 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.

Because there’s such an unbelievable amount that we’re all supposed to be able to cope with these days. You’re supposed to have a job, and somewhere to live, and a family, and you’re supposed to pay taxes and have clean underwear and remember the password to your damn Wi-Fi. Some of us never manage to get the chaos under control, so our lives simply carry on, the world spinning through space at two million miles an hour while we bounce about on its surface like so many lost socks. 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. We’re not in control. So we learn to pretend, all the time, about our jobs and our marriages and our children and everything else. We pretend we’re normal, that we’re reasonably well educated, that we understand “amortization levels” and “inflation rates.” That we know how sex works. In truth, we know as much about sex as we do about USB leads, and it always takes us four tries to get those little buggers in. (Wrong way round, wrong way round, wrong way round, there! In!) We pretend to be good parents when all we really do is provide our kids with food and clothing and tell them off when they put chewing gum they find on the ground in their mouths. We tried keeping tropical fish once and they all died. And we really don’t know more about children than tropical fish, so the responsibility frightens the life out of us each morning. We don’t have a plan, we just do our best to get through the day, because there’ll be another one coming along tomorrow.

Sometimes it hurts, it really hurts, for no other reason than the fact that our skin doesn’t feel like it’s ours. Sometimes we panic, because the bills need paying and we have to be grown-up and we don’t know how, because it’s so horribly, desperately easy to fail at being grown-up.

Because everyone loves someone, and anyone who loves someone has had those desperate nights where we lie awake trying to figure out how we can afford to carry on being human beings. Sometimes that makes us do things that seem ridiculous in hindsight, but which felt like the only way out at the time.

One single really bad idea. That’s all it takes.

One morning, for instance, a thirty-nine-year-old resident of a not particularly large or noteworthy town left home clutching a pistol, and that was—in hindsight—a really stupid idea. Because this is a story about a hostage drama, but that wasn’t the intention. That is to say, it was the intention that it should be a story, but it wasn’t the intention that it should be about a hostage drama. It was supposed to be about a bank robbery. But everything got a bit messed up, because sometimes that happens with bank robberies. So the thirty-nine-year-old bank robber fled, but with no escape plan, and the thing about escape plans is just like what the bank robber’s mom always said years ago, when the bank robber forgot the ice cubes and slices of lemon in the kitchen and had to run back: “If your head isn’t up to the job, your legs better be!” (It should be noted that when she died, the bank robber’s mom consisted of so much gin and tonic that they didn’t dare cremate her because of the risk of explosion, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t have good advice to offer.) So after the bank robbery that wasn’t actually a bank robbery, the police showed up, of course, so the bank robber got scared and ran out, across the street and into the first door that presented itself. It’s probably a bit harsh to label the bank robber an idiot simply because of that, but… well, it certainly wasn’t an act of genius. Because the door led to a stairwell with no other exits, which meant the bank robber’s only option was to run up the stairs.

It should be noted that this particular bank robber had the same level of fitness as the average thirty-nine-year-old. Not one of those big-city thirty-nine-year-olds who deal with their midlife crisis by buying ridiculously expensive cycling shorts and swimming caps because they have a black hole in their soul that devours Instagram pictures, more the sort of thirty-nine-year-old whose daily consumption of cheese and carbohydrates was more likely to be classified medically as a cry for help rather than a diet. So by the time the bank robber reached the top floor, all sorts of glands had opened up, causing breathing that sounded like something you usually associate with the sort of secret societies that demand a password through a hatch in the door before they let you in. By this point, any chance of evading the police had dwindled to pretty much nonexistent.

But by chance the robber turned and saw that the door to one of the apartments in the building was open, because that particular apartment happened to be up for sale and was full of prospective buyers looking around. So the bank robber stumbled in, panting and sweaty, holding the pistol in the air, and that was how this story ended up becoming a hostage drama.

And then things went the way they did: the police surrounded the building, reporters showed up, the story made it onto the television news. The whole thing went on for several hours, until the bank robber had to give up. There was no other choice. So all eight people who had been held hostage, seven prospective buyers and one real estate agent, were released. A couple of minutes later the police stormed the apartment. But by then it was empty.

No one knew where the bank robber had gone.

That’s really all you need to know at this point. Now the story can begin.
--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B082J5KYG6
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Atria Books (September 8, 2020)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ September 8, 2020
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 2331 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 349 pages
Lending ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled

Best Sellers Rank: #1,962 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #9 in Humorous Literary Fiction
- #35 in General Humorous Fiction
- #39 in Friendship Fiction (Kindle Store)

Customer Reviews:
44,604 ratings

About the author

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Fredrik Backman

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Fredrik Backman is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Man Called Ove, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry, Britt-Marie Was Here, Beartown, Us Against You, and two novellas, And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer and The Deal of a Lifetime, as well as one work of nonfiction, Things My Son Needs to Know About the World. His books are published in more than forty countries. His next novel, Anxious People, will be published in September 2020. He lives in Stockholm, Sweden, with his wife and two children. Connect with him on Facebook and Twitter @BackmanLand or on Instagram @Backmansk.

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Bianca Trevino

Best of 2020

Reviewed in the United States on September 8, 2020

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I'm a little biased but Backman can do no wrong! I thought this was a stunning novel, he is hands down one of my favorite authors and I found Anxious People to be incredible!

Perhaps this is a story about a hostage situation, anxious people, idiots, an apartment viewing, a police investigation, a bridge.

Perhaps this is a story about human relationships, which is something Backman writes about masterfully. This one was no exception, I laughed, I cried, I savored every word and page. Another brilliant novel by one of the best!

453 people found this helpful

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Schinnie

Disappointing

Reviewed in the United States on October 1, 2020

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Oh my gosh is this the same Fredrik Bachman who wrote the wonderful Bear Town/ Us Against You??? What is the purpose of this book on these so called anxious people? I couldn’t make it to the first 100 pages. The dialogues are so meaningless but a bunch of ramblings about these characters who are totally lack of appeal. I feel the author is trying to build up something big but do not care for his style. Feeling very impatient and agonizingly slow with the silly conversations. No connection to this book at all. The interview parts are especially painful and they are NOT even funny, far from it. I really couldn’t get through this book. What a disappointment from one of the most anticipated books in my list.

270 people found this helpful

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Patti

I loved this book - more than I loved A Man Called Ove

Reviewed in the United States on September 12, 2020

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Oh my gosh I loved this book - more than I loved A Man Called Ove. You could say that this book was how a bank robber failed to rob a bank but instead managed to spark a hostage drama. I would describe it as 'Everyone you know is fighting a battle you know nothing about'. The reason the bank robber wants to rob the bank is heartbreaking. There were also plenty of moments when I laughed out loud. There are many nuggets of wisdom. There is also a bit of mystery; you learn bits about the different people as you read and need to put the pieces together. Also, what happened to the bank robber?

This is one of my many highlights, "Grandchildren would make him feel important?” Anna-Lena smiled weakly. “Have you ever held a three-year-old by the hand on the way home from preschool?” “No.” “You’re never more important than you are then.”"

284 people found this helpful

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Palmeroy

Annoyiing style

Reviewed in the United States on September 23, 2020

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This was a book for my book club and I really wanted to like it. I enjoyed the author's previous books. I liked the opening few pages and thought it was going to be fun to read. But soon it became torture. I didn't care for the style of writing, the characters were annoying and it was depressing. I gave up about a third of the way through. Most of my book club said they didn't like the first 3/4 of the book, but it got really good in the last 1/4 as everything came together. Then you understood why people behaved the way they did in the earlier part. The problem for me is why struggle thru 3/4 of a book just to get to the good part.

260 people found this helpful

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cocochanel20

Not what I expected!

Reviewed in the United States on September 9, 2020

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This book had a complex start and set up but it is worth working through this. This book touches your heart and soul and that is so important in this year of 2020. I highly recommend this book and love this author! He reaches deep!

249 people found this helpful

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Denice J. Lipscomb

Superb

Reviewed in the United States on September 14, 2020

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I read this book in two days. I had to force myself to put it down long enough to get anything done around my house. I laughed, I cried and I read so many passages out loud to my husband that I think he started avoiding me.
I loved the way stereotypes were broken and I loved the way the author tied everything together. If you want a heartwarming and entertaining book this is the one you should choose.

195 people found this helpful

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MrsLeif

This is a story of the worst hostages ever!

Reviewed in the United States on September 10, 2020

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"Worst hostages ever."

A bank robbery that never becomes a bank robbery. A hostage situation that might not be a hostage situation. Yet, there is intent, a mask, and a gun involved.

Eight stranger's anxieties that are all in one apartment viewing when a masked individual walks in, a suicide, a psychologist, and two cops trying to get to the bottom of it all, becomes the perfect mixture for a good novel.

Surprisingly funny and sad with moments of revelation is what Anxious People delivers to this reader. I became engrossed in the life of these people. How fate has put them all together in one place to bring out all of their issues into the open.

Anxiuos People has a true message. A good person can make a bad decision. Should the bad decision define us? Should we get a second chance? We have all been "idiots" at one point. Right?

I encourage people to read this book. It is not the usual prose I'm used to but it works nonetheless.

Cliffhanger: No

4/5 Fangs

138 people found this helpful

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Olivia Brogdon

Lovely

Reviewed in the United States on September 10, 2020

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Oh it was so lovely. It was hard and sad and happy and good and silly and all the loveliness that warms you and makes you cry when you read a Backman book. Backman just has a magic way of writing about people that are so real that they take up space in your heart. Anxious People felt intimate and thoughtful. With thoughts we all think and hurts we all feel. Worn by people we all know. And the overall theme of our need for each other that you find in all of Backman’s books was there, familiar and comforting as ever.

111 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Terry Mooney

If you only read one book read this one

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 6, 2021

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I have read thousands of books and every one by this author. This is the most wonderfuI, amazing, beautiful....just the most. This is not Terry the reviews are in his name because he bought me a Kindle for my birthday ten years ago and left it in his account telling me to buy what I wanted. Thank you Terry. Now read this book. I'll lend you my Kindle. Carole

80 people found this helpful

Rosamund S.

Mixed feelings

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 29, 2020

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I often love reading the work of Frederick Backman, first encountering his world in Grandmother sends her regards. The best thing about this book is the plot, which I think is quite a new venture for Backman but still manages to convey his usual messages and style. Kudos to that! The theme of mental illness and the consequences of that are also quite powerfully conveyed. However, despite some of the heart-rending and heart-warming moments and issues that really hit home for me, I have a couple of issues with this book. Firstly, the storylines and ultimate ending or endings are quite predictable, if you have read enough book by this author. It’s always about dysfunctional family, love and always always death and grief. I wish he would consider writing a book without any mention of death for once in the future, so it wouldn’t get so tedious over the time. Secondly, it gets so bogged down with all the political and ‘diversity’ statement to the point of being an overkill. Sure the author is most probably a fierce advocate for these people, but a story shouldn’t always be about what the author thinks, but how it might reflect the society and what other people actually think. Maybe for once he could leave immigration and stuff like that alone. Or maybe it’s just a Swedish thing, I don’t know. It just feels like everything he says, he is trying to make some sort of statement somehow, and regardless of my views on those issues, I find them to interfere too much with the story. Overall, I would still say that this book, like many of Backman’s books, is worth a read.

54 people found this helpful

Singh, R.

The Stockholmers

Reviewed in India on November 12, 2020

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I remember reading A Man Called Ove in 2017 and being smitten by the author’s writing and imagination. I wonder why I didn’t pick up his other books right after that. Anyway, I came across his latest release and decided to order it then and there because I wanted something light, breezy, funny and I knew this author could deliver that to me in a book. The story is set in a small town of Sweden and revolves around the day before New Year’s Eve. After a failed attempt at bank robbery, there is a hostage drama going on in a flat around which the book is set. Following the lives of a host of characters, we witness their sentiments and anxieties evolving with every scene and incident as the plot unfurls. We see their ups and downs, we hear the pain and happiness echoing in their shaky voices, we look at the smallness of life and the immeasurable nature of it as age or time takes control over self. It was funny and a life affirming book. A book that spoke about kindness, and compassion. It is a novel that stops being fiction and speaks closely to us, not in our ears, but to our hearts; how important and beautiful life can sometimes be, even on the worst days. Yes, I have written down praises of this book but I don’t think it is as good as AMCO. I felt the author was ambitious in this book, with too many characters and too many stories. It left little for me to sit with one character and try to know them closely myself. I felt the author telling me all things about life and I don’t like it when an author does that. It begins to seem like a self-help book and I don’t seek that in fiction. I wanted the author simply to show me what lives do these people live. That’s all. However, I do recommend you this book if you are looking for something light and positive. It will put a smile on your face, for sure.

69 people found this helpful

Rebecca

Strong Story with Message ﹗

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 1, 2021

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This was such a gorgeously written story, with such a strong and important message. I'm really struggling to come up with the right words for this review. I don't think this book will ever leave me.

The main things I got from this story was love can make you do idiotic things, and you can never surely know what's happening in someone's life and how they really feel unless you talk to one another.

All of the characters here bonded over their life stories, choices, differences and similarities and although the situation was strange and stressful, the kindness in these strangers was absolute. I really cant praise this book enough. I think I'm going to have a long lasting book hangover with this one!

16 people found this helpful

Avid Reader

Like cutting through an onion

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 16, 2021

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A good book is one where the plot development is not obvious from the outset. This book was like going through layers of an onion - there's just more and more the deeper you go. The author manages to weave together humour and absurdity with some pretty sobering insights about life and adulthood. Each character is not the person you thought he was, and it is delightful to see how their motivations are revealed as their personalities develop. I wonder how much Swedish culture attributes to this delightful cast, but one thing for sure, I will never look at rabbit costumes the same way again :)

18 people found this helpful

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Fredrik Backman
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Fredrik Backman
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Fredrik Backman
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