After reading Fredrick Backman’s Novel “A Man Called Ove” I decided to dive into the author’s other works.

Anxious People starts out as a simple story about a bank robbery and a hostage situation, but it quickly develops into a larger story about mental health, interpersonal connections, and how complicated we really are as people. It’s also a story that teaches us why it’s important to have empathy and not pass judgment on others.

At the very beginning of this story we learn the tragic backstory of why the main character became a bank robber; quickly realizing that they are not violent, criminally motivated, or greedy. The bank robber is simply down on their luck and in need of a quick solution to a dire problem. 

That solution involved attempting to rob a bank, failing, and then accidentally taking an apartment full of people hostage. 

The story also becomes much more complex and interesting when we learn the backstories to all of the hostages, and the police officers on duty.

Without spoiling any of the amazing plot twists of this story, which are what really make the story pop, I’ll say that this story does an amazing job at tying everyone together and making a point as to how hard it is to read someone by one based on one single interaction.

At first glance a lot of the characters of this story feel dull, rude, annoying, and predictable. They’re all touring an apartment and acting like themselves without much care for the people next to them. They pass slight judgments on each other based on the little interactions they have during the viewing. That is until a failed bank robber storms in and they’re all held hostage for several hours, giving them plenty of time to get to know each other better.

That is when our characters slowly start to learn about each other, develop empathy for each other’s situations, and eventually start to impact each other’s lives.

All the while the story goes back and forth between the hostages and the cops outside on the case. A father and son duo that are butting heads constantly about this case. They can’t see eye to eye, but they continue to support each other. Linked together by the kind of love that mainly exists in family relationships.

I would recommend this story to anyone who enjoys feel-good novels that have beautiful and heartwarming plot twists. I have a hard time even explaining this novel because I don’t want to spoil any of the plot twists. But like I said in the beginning, this is a story about mental health, interpersonal relationships, and how much more complicated we all are than we seem.

We may look like average people living average lives, but on the inside we all have so much more going on than anyone could know with one look. We only truly get to know each other when we take the time to see each other beyond first impressions. When we choose to see each other as people, rather than as failed bank robbers, or grumpy old men trying to cut a deal on an apartment.

The truth about this story is that it reveals an uncomfortable truth about life. How we pass so many people on a day to day basis that we’ll never really know (unless we were forced together by a silly bank robber who tried to rob a cashless bank). We pass judgements on people before we even know their motives, understand their stories, or see past the first impressions they make on us.

We’re all anxious people doing our best to survive, but we hardly get to know each other enough to see each other that way. We can pass an endless amount of people in this world and never know a thing about them, while also judging every move they make as if we understand their motives.

My favorite part of this story was the fact that we come to learn that a lot of these characters are connected by a common event that took place over a decade earlier. It affected them all differently and somehow led to them all to continue being in each other’s lives over a decade later. It pushed some of them to grow, and helped some of them heal inside. But it also caused some of them great distress. In the end, it was learning to understand each other that brought them all healing and closure.

This story shows just how amazing the world can be if we all choose to have a little empathy for each other.

Spoiler alert! The only spoiler I’ll give away because it really highlights the message this story is trying to share.

In the end, after all the witness statements, we see a moment of true empathy in this story. In the beginning of this story, the police reveal that they lost the robber. After the hostages were freed from the apartment, the police stormed the building and couldn’t find the robber anywhere. In the end though, we find out the unbelievable truth of what happened to the bank robber.

Everyone, including the hostages and the one of the police officers, chose to help the bank robber escape and evade arrest. After hearing the horrible story about how the robber was really just a mother who’d been deeply hurt by her soon to be ex husband, and was made to believe she’d lose her kids, they all wanted her to avoid jail time and get back to her children.  Despite the fact that she held several people hostage, because they had empathy for her dire situation. A woman who’d grown so desperate and afraid that she robbed a bank in an attempt to keep her kids safe.

Everyone makes mistakes, all of the hostages knew that, and they refused to watch the bank robber go to prison for a mistake any of them could have made if they were put in her shoes.

That’s why I really enjoyed this novel. It’s a simple reminder that we shouldn’t judge others and that we don’t really know the people around us well enough to assume their motives. We shouldn’t even pass judgment on someone robbing a cashless bank, because you never know what desperate situation that person is in. 

We’re all capable of stupid mistakes when faced with difficult situations.

Stay Psyched,

Vicky