44 pages 1 hour read

Fredrik Backman

Anxious People

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2019

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Summary and Study Guide

Overview

Fredrik Backman’s 2019 novel, Anxious People, is a work of adult fiction that follows the lives of various characters and demonstrates how their anxieties, hopes, and fears intertwine. Backman is a New York Times bestselling author, columnist, and blogger whose works have been published in over 40 countries, including his native Sweden. One of his most famous novels, A Man Called Ove (2012), became a feature film in 2015. This study guide refers to the 2020 translation by Neil Smith.

Plot Summary

Anxious People is a character driven novel that uses the plot of a failed bank robbery and hostage situation as the catalyst that brings the various characters together. The novel also continually uses the element of surprise to slowly reveal key facts regarding the secrets and details of the characters and the plot. Backman achieves this through an opinionated, omniscient narrator who hides strategic details from the reader to make a point or enhance the plot. The bank robber exemplifies this narrative technique. In the beginning of the novel, the narrator refers to the bank robber without attaching gender, and the cops assume that the bank robber is a man. However, towards the end of the story the narrator reveals that the bank robber is a woman.

The story begins with two cops, father and son duo Jim and Jack, interrogating the various hostages recently released from a faux-hostage situation. After their release, the bank robber essentially vanished. The former hostages mostly evade Jim and Jack’s questions, and it eventually becomes clear that they’re hiding something. The story jumps from past to present: Jim and Jack interrogate the former hostages, and they recall what happened during their captivity. However, the narrator frequently interrupts this pattern to include philosophical musings regarding the inner lives of the characters and humanity.

The bank robber initially tried to rob a bank only to find that the establishment was cashless. In desperation she fled to a nearby apartment complex and hid inside an open apartment, only to realize that the door was open because a realtor is in the middle of showing the space to hopeful buyers. The prospective home owners see the bank robber’s mask and gun and assume they’re being held hostage. The bank robber unintentionally upholds this theory but maintains that she won’t hurt anyone. She eventually reveals that she only wanted to rob the bank because she needed money for rent—her husband recently cheated on her with her boss and divorced her, and if she can’t pay rent she will lose her daughters. By this point, the hostages have grown closer together and worked through collective and personal anxieties, and they decide to help the bank robber escape. This sentiment develops further when Jim encourages the bank robber to escape because she reminds him of his heroin-addicted daughter.

The story revolves around a friendly hostage situation, but it also centers on a bridge that the hostages can see from the balcony of the apartment. A man committed suicide on the bridge when Jack was younger. The man felt hopeless because he lost his entire life savings in a banking downturn. Jack saw the man jump but was unable to save him, and he was forever after haunted by that guilt. Weeks later, he did stop a young girl, Nadia, from jumping off the same bridge and decided to become a cop because he wanted to dedicate his life to helping people. Nadia grew up to become a psychologist and started seeing a patient named Zara. Zara was the banker who wouldn’t let the man who committed suicide receive a loan. She also witnessed Nadia’s rescue on the bridge by Jack. The bridge is the element that connects these characters in a largely positive way despite originally causing their individual anxieties.