Welcome to the fifth of my 'Reading the Rainbow' posts, in which I take the books I received in my 2023 book advent - each cover representing a different colour - and review them for you!
May is RED and the book is Anxious People by Fredrik Backman.
Read on to find out more...
Blurb: It's New Year's Eve and House Tricks estate agents are hosting an open viewing in an up-market apartment when an incompetent bank robber rushes in and politely takes everyone hostage.
For Anna-Lena and Roger, busy buying-up apartments to fill the hole in their marriage, it's something else to talk about.
For Julia and Ro, panicky parents-to-be, it's yet another worry.
Lonely bank manager Zara only came here for the view.
While 87-year-old grandmother Estelle seems rather pleased by the company . . .
As the police gather outside, the anxious strangers huddled within try to make the best of a very sticky situation - but could it be that they have a whole lot more in common than meets the eye?
Review: The unusual narrative style of this story was arresting from the start - with characters deliberately obfuscated and obfuscating - and it was a little startling for the first few pages as I was trying to get a feel for who everyone was and what was happening, but it didn't take long for the rambling, conversational style of the narration to become one of my favourite things about this book.
Other favourite things included the humour, the pathos, the initially ridiculous but eventually incredibly relatable character, the riddle-in-a-mystery-in-an-enigma plot that felt so intricate and interconnected and yet was somehow very easy to read... everything really. One minute I was laughing at the silly police interview dialogue and the next I was nodding enthusiastically at a description of the difficulties of adulthood and its many responsibilities.
The coincidences in the plot are not meant to be believable or realistic, but they make for a very satisfyingly neat finale and are balanced by the realism of the pain, worries and fears of the small cast of characters. The story hangs around a banking system and a bridge, but its heart is the despair and kindness of ordinary, everyday people.
This is one of those books that made me immediately seek out everything else the author has written to add them to my wish-list and also create a mental list of people in my life that I need to buy copies for as soon as possible (three so far, and counting!)
I would recommend this book to anyone who wants a unique, people-centred locked-room mystery that really gets how hard modern life can be for all sorts of different people and reasons.
This story is about a lot of things, but mostly about idiots. So it needs saying from the outset that it's always very easy to declare that other people are idiots, but only if you forget how idiotically difficult being human is. Especially if you have other people you're trying to be a reasonably good human being for.
- Fredrik Backman, Anxious People
About the author:
Fredrik Backman is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Man Called Ove, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry, Britt-Marie Was Here, Beartown, Us Against You, and Anxious People, as well as two novellas and one work of nonfiction. His books are published in more than forty countries. He lives in Stockholm, Sweden, with his wife and two children.
Website: https://www.fredrikbackmanbooks.com/index.html
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Backmanland
X/Twitter: https://x.com/Backmanland
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/backmansk/
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