Thursday, October 8, 2020

Anxious People

Title: Anxious People
Author: Fredrik Backman
Published: September 8th 2020 by Atria Books
Format: Hardcover, 352 pages
Genre: Fiction
Source: My thanks to Netgalley and the Publisher for an opportunity to read an advanced copy of this book.

I am so glad the author referenced the Sixth Sense since I feel that I need to reread the book to see what I missed. I know there are lines or reference I missed since each revelation caught me off guard. Told in a somewhat spiral way, each layer, which was slow peeled back, shows how our stories can be interrelated. And I dare anyone to not be in tears by the end.

Fredrik Backman plays on our preconceptions when through a fumbling bank robbery, eight people become friends. The reader becomes embroiled in their lives to the point that when it comes to the actual robber, the point is moot. Stories and facts become enmeshed with all the other interwoven aspects. Accounts that don’t fully come to light until the last layer is laid bare and all the players are revealed.

From an annoying realtor, to a couple looking for their next renovation project instead of having to speak to each other, to a young couple with a child on the way, to the woman obsessed with the view to a storied bridge, to a woman who desperately misses her late husband they have bonded and shared their stories full of hope and heartbreak.

Yet this is not a sad story, like all of Backman’s books, this is a look into human nature. A dark look at hope and understanding and the possibility that things can get better. How shared events, and words of wisdom, can bring together people facing the most anxious moments of their lives.

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