Anxious People: Little Bit Of All Of Us
Anxious People, a new book by the Swedish author Fredrik Backman, is by his own admission, his most difficult one to finish as well. While reading the book, I couldn’t help going back to a long, self-reflective essay that he wrote on his website about his long-standing battles with anxiety and depression. Did I search for traces of Backman’s demons in his new book? Yes, I did.
Did I find any?
Not at first, for while the world that Backman creates in Anxious People is full of anxious people, they are all so neatly delineated and caricatured that you forget about the real life for the first few pages. And, you laugh. Not the gentle, half hidden smiles — though you also do that a lot while turning pages — but you laugh out aloud, especially after reading the first couple of pages.
The story is anchored in a typical small Swedish town. Though Backman doesn’t put a name to it, it very well could be the Swedish town where I live. Like in most countries, these small-town residents hold the folks from the big city, ‘Stockholmers’ in this case, in disdain.
The book begins at the scene of a hostage drama, which was actually supposed to be a bank robbery. The hostage taker, desperate with his state of affairs — he is short on rent, and without a place to live; he would end up losing the custody of his child as well — had originally set out to rob a bank. The bank turned out to be a cashless one, as most banks are these days. At his wits end now, he ends up dealing with the bunch of hostages who had come for an apartment-viewing nearby. “I’m having quite a complicated day here!” he says at the beginning of the hostage drama.
The hostages include Zara, who’s laced with sarcasm, and with the unusual penchant of going to apartment viewings to fill her loneliness. Then there is an 87-year old woman, Estelle, who is least scared and sympathizes with the hostage-taker. There are two couples in the story. In one, the husband, Roger, considers himself a practical man. He goes around knocking at the apartment walls, searching for opportunities to refurbish and resell the apartment later. His wife, Anna-Lena, is someone who speaks little and stands quietly by the side of her husband. She is perhaps nestling a secret inside. The other is a lesbian couple, Julia and Ro, who are expecting a baby. Like everyone else, they are trying to beat the competition to buy this apartment. Many in India may not wholly relate to this particular aspect on apartment hunting that forms the backdrop of the story. However, having lived in Sweden for more than a decade, I can confirm that apartment hunting in Sweden can be considered in the same league as any other competitive sport. You lose if you don’t move fast and bid hard.
Then there is a man hiding in the bathroom wearing underpants and a costume rabbit’s head. Lacing these narratives together are the cops, Jim and Jack, a father-son duo struggling with their own relationship. On top, they have never experienced such a situation before and have to Google what they should do next while an expert from Stockholm is on the way. Meanwhile, they try to piece together the clues by interviewing the now-freed hostages about the alleged hostage taker who has now gone missing leaving a wake of blood behind him.
All these men and women form the core of the story. While some may find the number of characters in the book overwhelming, it helps that Backman is a master at characterization. He keeps them simple and exaggerates their oddness. Backman writes about them humanely and humorously and in the process teaches us a few lessons on love and compassion. It’s a little Stockholm Syndrome trick that Backman does on us. By the end of it all, we all end up seeing our own bits and pieces in Backman’s characters who are not all likeable at first.
Some may refer to this book as a dark comedy. On the surface, it may seem so. However, I would rather bucket it under the philosophy section, for Backman deftly touches upon quite a few real issues of life, such as love, marriage, and parenthood, among others. It helps that he is funny, and his narrative is simple. That’s an indication that he is at the top of his craft currently.
Read Anxious People not in a rush, but when you have time to unwind. Ideally, keep it next to your bed. It is one of those books that makes for a light and profound read and stays with you long after you have finished reading it.
This review was published in The Hindu
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