"Anxious People" was written by Fredrik Backman and published in 2019. This isn't the first Fredrik Backman book that I've read so I thought I knew what to expect. I thought I was in for a quirky book with strange, complicated and eventually lovable characters. After you really get to know them. In the end I got something different I got was a mild thriller with a shocking plot twist ending which I absolutely loved.
The premise of the story is simple. A person tries to rob a bank, fails and barricades himself in an apartment which was open for viewing before sale. The apartment has a few couples and a few single people in it and they are all held hostage at gun point. However, this is Backman we are talking about. Of course the entire story is told from the viewpoint of the robber. We sympathize with him, his pain, troubles and the hardship that has led him to take such extreme measures. We want him to succeed even though he is an idiot. We also get to learn about all of the people that he holds hostage. They may appear like simple caricatures at first, but these are complicated people with complicated lives.
That's the beauty with characters in Backman's books, they are usually complicated people and may not seem very likable, but in the end you will get it. Everyone has a story that brought them to this place and no one is simple or one dimensional. No one is just evil. And in the end you will fall in love with most characters.
On top of all of this good stuff there is the plot. The robber is faced with a difficult choice, he can either face the police or stay barricaded in the apartment. In the end after failing to rob a bank, he has nothing to show for his efforts. But there such a major plot twist at the end that I didn't see it coming. We all saw movies about bank robbers and how it can all go down, or hostage movies, but I have never seen it go down like this. It was just brilliant. It also emphasizes the bias that we have as readers when we are presented with certain life situations.
If you're looking for a more special and positive book to read, this is the book for you.
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