“Anxious People” made my heart hurt; it was that good. It started off with this very unusual premise of a bank robbery gone bad at a bank with no money. I’m like, ok… Then the people started talking and the whole book just came together. One thing I love about Fredrik Backman’s writing is the way he weaves his character’s storylines together – all of a sudden you see these connections that you didn’t know even existed.
You think they’re a little bit too quirky at the beginning. I’m like, “No one would do that.” Then before you know it, you love them a little, some more than others. I really don’t look at his characters as part of the book, they’re just people. Most are people I want to get to know. How many books do you read where you feel that way about the characters?
The endings are always a big surprise that you should have seen coming but you’re so invested by that point that you totally missed it. His characters end up being little pieces of all the people that we know. The ones with money troubles, the lonely ones, the ones that need to be rescued, the sweet ones, and the anxious ones. This will be added to my list of all-time favorites. An easy 5 Stars!
I’ll leave it to Fredrik Backman to sum it up in his own words, “They say a person’s personality is the sum of their experiences. But that isn’t true, at least not entirely, because if our past was all that defined us, we’d never be able to put up with ourselves. We need to be allowed to convince ourselves that we’re more than the mistakes we made yesterday. That we are all of our next choices, too, all of our tomorrows.” – Fredrik Backman from “Anxious People.”
