Backman's
construct is straightforward: an open-house apartment viewing. What could
possibly go wrong? Everything, especially when a gun-wielding bank robber
targets a cashless bank and winds up, through a series of mishaps, at the open
house. In bumbling, snowballing desperation, the robber takes eight people,
high-maintenance strangers at the viewing, hostage. When the robber ultimately
escapes, two police officers--a father and son facing personal struggles of their
own--investigate the crime and try to make sense of the who, how and why of
this topsy-turvy, totally-gone-awry robbery scenario and all involved.
Backman
(Us Against You) skillfully employs an omniscient narrative voice and short,
focused chapters that unwind an intricate plot through interspersed--extremely
telling and very funny--police interrogation scenes. Readers are kept
off-balance by details of the hostage siege as characters reveal their personal
dilemmas. This intensifies the narrative tension and drama, upping the literal
and figurative anxiousness of the book's title. Backman's signature
storytelling wit and wisdom--the way he unravels his puzzle while peeling back
layers of complex relationships, personal burdens and secrets carried by
all--enables this fresh, quirky, over-the-top comedy to coalesce into poignant
profundity.
Anxious People by Fredrik
Backman
Atria, $28.00
Hardcover, 9781501160837, 352 pages
Publication
Date: September 29, 2020
To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE
NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission
of Shelf
Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (September 8, 2020), link HERE
To read the longer form of this
review as published on Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade (August 14, 2020), link HERE
