Book Review: Anxious People

I absolutely loved this book. Fredrik Backman is an awesome writer although, I am not sure his writing style is for everyone. But, I for one, am a fan. I found Anxious People to be an entertaining, hilarious, interesting, page turning, intriguing story about a failed bank robbery and eight hostages in an open house. What madness!

What I loved most about this book was how you got to know each of the hostages and the bank robber as people, you got to see their story, how and why they act the way that they do when confronted with this stressful situation. This book really highlighted the saying “Everyone has a story to tell”. All of us, really are trying the best we can and figuring out life one day at a time. I think this is what makes Backman’s books so special is that he can bring the characters to life, you begin to understand them better as the story goes along, you can begin to see some of you in them. How would I have reacted in this situation?

PS. At first, I found the story a bit disjointed because of the writing style but I think this was because I was only finding a ten minutes here and there to read and did not get into the flow of the story. However, on the weekend I sat down with this book and read for about an hour and really fell in love with all the crazy characters who happened to be held hostage in this open house after the bank robber tried to rob a cashless bank (talk about poor planning!). Rating 4/5

“Because the terrible thing about becoming an adult is being forced to realize that absolutely nobody cares about us, we have to deal with everything ourselves now, find out how the whole world works. Work and pay bills, use dental floss and get to meetings on time, stand in line and fill out forms, come to grips with cables and put furniture together, change tires on the car and charge the phone and switch the coffee machine off and not forget to sign the kids up for swimming lessons. We open our eyes in the morning and life is just waiting to tip a fresh avalanche of “Don’t Forget!”s and “Remember!”s over us. We don’t have time to think or breathe, we just wake up and start digging through the heap, because there will be another one dumped on us tomorrow. We look around occasionally, at our place of work or at parents’ meetings or out in the street, and realize with horror that everyone else seems to know exactly what they’re doing. We’re the only ones who have to pretend. Everyone else can afford stuff and has a handle on other stuff and enough energy to deal with even more stuff. And everyone else’s children can swim.”

Have you read this one already? What did you think of it?

It is available on Amazon for USD $13.06 for the paperback version.

Much Love,

Celly