I really truly enjoyed 3/4ths of this book. Which surprised me because I wasn’t overly enthralled with Fredrik Backman’s A Man Called Ove. Backman’s Anxious People is about an incompetent bank robber and a hostage situation with “the worst hostages ever,” but it’s even more about understanding and finding connection in unlikely places, with unlikely people. It displays a nice blend of lighthearted humor and heavy topics so it’s neither too blasé or too depressing.
There is also a mystery element regarding how the bank robber/hostage taker evades the police, and at least twice when I was reading the book I wanted to reread it immediately because it actually surprised me more than once…and I’m always newly surprised when a book actually surprises me.
The structure of the book, especially in the beginning, was awesome. He included some short, punchy chapters and police interview segments that helped drive the pace or deliver an emotional effect. And I love how he set up the characters of the two police officers and of the hostage taker. I also came to enjoy Roger and Anna-Lena as more and more of their history was revealed. I thought the buildup towards connecting all of the characters in some way was well done. I genuinely felt like all of these elements—the structure, pace, characters, reveals—set up the novel so well…only for it to end on a subpar note.
At times throughout the book it could be a bit preachy, and at times it could drag a little bit, but I could forgive it until it got to be too much nearing the end. It got overly sentimental and dwelled on characters that I didn’t care as much about. And it got less and less believable. That’s my biggest gripe. Whatever the author originally leads us to believe is more believable than what he claims actually happened. It became so farfetched and dirtied the characters in saccharine mist, like he drizzled sugar over them and let it become crystallized so you could no longer see them clearly.
I wish that the last fourth of the novel could be reworked, rewritten. I truly thought after finishing the novel I would have the itch to immediately start it over again so I could read it knowing the reveal, but the ending did away with that impulse. I think I will read it again but I’m not as compelled to do it right away like I was while reading.
