Anxious People by Fredrik Backman: A Book That Will Make You Cry

Read time: 5 minutes

🎧 Listened in audio 📢 Narrated by Marin Ireland ⏱ Duration: 10 hours
Genre: Contemporary Fiction 🏷️ Publisher name: Simon & Schuster / Atria Publishing

Book Blurb:

An apartment open house takes a dangerous turn when a failed bank robber bursts in and takes a group of strangers hostage. Among them: a retired couple obsessed with fixer uppers to avoid fixing their own marriage, a wealthy banker who’s never had time for anyone but himself, a young couple expecting their first child but unable to agree on anything, an eighty seven year old woman unbothered by guns, a real estate agent still trying to close the deal, and a mysterious man locked in the bathroom. As police and media surround the building, these reluctant hostages reveal surprising truths about themselves, and set off a chain of events even they can’t fully explain.

Let’s talk about the book:

Reading Fredrik Backman is not really reading. It’s something closer to absorbing a person’s whole heart over a few hundred pages, and then carrying it around with you for weeks after you’ve finished. I don’t know how he does it. Twenty six letters, rearranged, and somehow you end up crying on your kitchen floor over a fictional bank robber.

This one starts with a premise that sounds almost like a sitcom setup. A failed bank robbery. An apartment open house. A group of strangers who get taken hostage by someone who can’t even rob a bank properly. Nine people, or eight, or maybe seven. The book keeps circling back to that number like it’s a joke it’s not quite ready to let go of, and honestly, that’s part of the fun.

What got me wasn’t the mystery of it (though I did want to know how it all shook out). It was watching these people, who would never in a hundred years have spoken to each other, end up saying things out loud they’d never said to anyone. A retired couple who spend their weekends touring other people’s broken homes because it’s easier than looking at their own marriage. A banker who’s spent so long chasing money he’s forgotten what it’s for. A young couple about to have a baby who can’t agree on where to live or even how they met in the first place, which, if you think about it, is its own kind of alarming.

There’s something about a stranger that lets people say the real thing. Not the polished version you give your friends. The actual, messy, underneath version. Backman gets that completely, and he builds an entire book around it without it ever feeling like a gimmick.

There’s also a backstory running underneath the whole thing, quietly, that ties everything together by the end. I won’t say more than that. Just know it’s there, and it’s precious, and it makes the ending land so much harder than you expect it to.

I also have to talk about Marin Ireland, because this audiobook would not have hit the way it did without her. A blah narrator can kill an emotional book like this one, no matter how good the writing is underneath it. Marin does the opposite. Every character has its own weight in her voice, every pause lands exactly where it needs to. Honestly, I don’t think I would have cried the way I did if someone else had narrated this. She matches Backman’s writing beat for beat, which is not a small thing to say.

And one more callout, because he doesn’t get mentioned nearly enough: Neil Smith, the translator. This book was originally written in Swedish, and if it hadn’t been translated this well, English readers like me would never have gotten anywhere close to this level of satisfaction. Translation work like this is so easy to overlook when it’s done right, which is exactly the point.

By the end I wasn’t just reading about these people. I felt like I’d been locked in that apartment with them.

Would I recommend it?

Yes. Obviously yes. I don’t think “recommend” is even a strong enough word for what I want to do with this book, which is put it in every single person’s hands and refuse to let go until they’ve read it. I finished this one in tears, the good kind, the kind where you’re sad it’s over and grateful it happened at all. This is a book I will read again. And again.

If you loved this, try these next

• A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman — If you loved how Backman turns a room full of odd strangers into people you can’t stop thinking about, start with the book that made everyone fall for him in the first place.
  Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy
• Beartown by Fredrik Backman — Same gut punch of emotional weight, just traded out an apartment for a small hockey town that’s about to fall apart.
  Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy
• Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman — Another story about someone nobody quite understands turning out to be so much more than they seem, with that same mix of humor and heartbreak.
  Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy
• The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin — For that same found family feeling, just built around a bookstore instead of a hostage situation.
  Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy
• Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus — The same blend of humor, quiet heartbreak, and characters who feel completely real by the last page.
  Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy

Ever Told A Stranger Something You’ve Never Told A Friend?

There’s something about this book that made me think about every honest conversation I’ve had with someone I barely knew. A seatmate on a flight. Someone in line at a coffee shop. A person you’ll never see again, which somehow makes it easier to say the true thing. Has that ever happened to you? Tell me about it in the comments, I want to hear it.

Book Links:

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