USA TODAY US Edition

In ‘Anxious People,’ kindness wins out

- Don Oldenburg

Nothing happens in Fredrik Backman’s latest novel that’s all that likely – and, yet, as this quirky story unfolds and its collection of misfit characters emerge, “Anxious People” (Artria, 352 pp., $28, ★★★★) gradually becomes truer than life itself.

It’s almost New Year’s Eve in a small Swedish town when a distraught parent, short on rent and afraid of losing child custody, feebly attempts to rob a bank. When that doesn’t work (it’s a cashless bank) and police are closing in, the perplexed perpetrato­r, still wearing a ski mask and carrying a toy handgun, flees to a nearby apartment building and unintentio­nally turns an ordinary open house into an extraordin­ary hostage situation.

This locked-in mystery takes place mostly inside that apartment as eight diverse, peculiar people – strangers checking out an apartment for sale – suddenly personify the “anxious” in the book’s title. Sobbing, the failed bank robber apologizes, “I’m having quite a complicate­d day here!” And so is everyone.

The best-selling Swedish author of “Beartown” and “A Man Called Ove,” Backman is a master of writing delightful, insightful, soulful, characterd­riven narratives. Though unlike in “Ove,” no one here is lovable or even likable – not at first.

Staking out the hostage stalemate are two comically bumbling local police officers –father-and-son team, Jim and Jack, both decent guys. Befuddled, with no hostage-case experience, they Google what to do.

Captive in the apartment? AnnaLena and Roger are a retired couple who flip apartments to keep their fraying marriage intact. Pregnant lesbian couple Julia and Ro are panicking at the thought of parenthood. Contemptuo­us Zara is a well-off bank manager who prefers economics to people and, not surprising­ly, is depressed and lonely. The real estate agent is crazy daft. Grandmothe­rly 87-year-old Estelle seems biased.

But nothing is what it seems: not the bank robber’s identity, or the toy gun that’s real, or the man in the bathroom wearing only underpants and a costume rabbit’s head, or that balcony view of the suicide bridge connecting several characters. With Backman, as with life, there’s always a more compelling backstory, more heartbreak­ing and heartwarmi­ng secrets.

Barely mentioned is the “Stockholm Syndrome,” a psychologi­cal condition named for a 1973 botched bank robbery in Stockholm when four bank employees taken hostage affectiona­tely bonded with their captors. But Backman broadens the concept to embrace us all, our anxieties about life, our empathy for everyone, our struggles daily to do our best.

Caveat: If the first two remarkable, laugh-out-loud pages don’t hook you, read no further. But if the first 100 pages feel like you’re waiting for Godot inside an Ikea, keep reading. You won’t regret it.

Backman writes so humorously and poignantly about life, marriage, parenthood, love and death, prepare to be taken hostage by a stand-up philosophe­r/novelist who reminds us we are all “idiots” because being human is “idioticall­y difficult.”

“Anxious People” is about how kindness and compassion count so much in surviving each day – a lesson for our times. And how the one predictabl­e assessment of how life turns out may simply be: “This wasn’t how life was supposed to turn out.”

 ??  ??
 ??  ?? Backman
Backman

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United States