Anxious People by Fredrik Backman

 

Anxious People by Fredrik Backman was our December book club book. Backman is the author of A Man Called Ove, a book I absolutely adored, so I was quite excited about reading it.

This was a great choice for our book club. There were five of us there and each of us had a different take on it. One thought it was just really funny, one thought it was a great character study with moments of levity, one thought the characters were such terrible people it was hard to read, one thought that the narrator of the audio version made the book better, and one thought it was so well done in writing the spiraling thoughts of anxiety that it made her own anxiety worse.  It was just so fascinating to hear such diverse points of view.

I was the person who found my own anxiety ratcheting as I read this novel.  It's incredibly effective and Backman is a great author, no doubt, and I don't have a problem whole-heartedly recommending this book but I will warn folks that if you have some struggles with mental health, this book might not help much with your struggles.

Passage I Read Out Loud at Book Club:

"The truth? The truth is that the bank robber was an adult. There's nothing more revealing about a bank robber's personality than that. Because the terrible thing about becoming an adult is being forced to realize that absolutely nobody cares about us, we have to deal with everything ourselves now, find out how the whole world works. Work and pay bills, use dental floss and get to meetings on time, stand in line and fill out forms, come to grips with cables and put furniture together, change tires on the car and charge the phone and switch the coffee machine off and not forget to sign the kids up for swimming lessons. We open our eyes in the morning and life is just waiting to tip a fresh avalanche of "Don't Forget!"s and "Remember!"s over us. We don't have time to think or breathe, we just wake up and start digging through the heap, because there will be another one dumped on us tomorrow." (page 43)

I read it out loud because, if I'm honest, this is my every waking moment - racing thoughts and run-on sentences. I don't need it in my fiction. Most people in my book club found this comforting, though, to be reminded that everyone is going through life the same way.

Other Lines I Noted:

"They're going to send some special investigative team from Stockholm to take charge of the whole case. The boss didn't place the emphasis on the words "investigative team" when he said that, but on "Stockholm," as if coming from the capital itself was some sort of superpower. More like a medical condition, the policeman thinks. (page 6)

Some of the humor many people enjoyed.

"You can always tell by the way people who love each other argue: the longer they've been together, the fewer words they need to start a fight." (page 105)

Ha ha. Dr. BB and I were driving to Iowa a couple of months ago and he got snippy with me over music and THERE WERE NO WORDS SAID, simply a changing of song and volume of the radio. We literally didn't speak to each other for an hour after that, just driving along in charged silence in the car.

"She couldn't remember the last time she had seen her husband surprised, that's really not supposed to happen when you've been married so long." (page 148)

After a while, you know all the stories, you know all the reactions, and you know how the person thinks. It's one of the dubious pleasures of being married for a long time.

"When you're a child you long to be an adult and decide everything for yourself, but when you're an adult you realize that's the worst part of it. That you have to have opinions all the time, you have to decide which party to vote for and what wallpaper you like and what your sexual preferences are and which flavor yogurt best reflects your personality. You have to make choices and be chosen by others, every second, the whole time." (page 184)

I might argue that one does not "choose" sexual preferences (unless it's referring to things like what type of condom/lube/vibrator you prefer, I suppose), but this is another example of the anxiety-inducing passages that overwhelmed at times while reading the book.

"She remembered when used to read bedtime stories to the children, and Peter Pan declaring: 'To die will be an awfully big adventure.' Maybe for the person doing it, Estelle thought, but not for the one who was left behind. All that awaited her were a thousand sunrises where life is a beautiful prison." (page 248)

To be left alone when your spouse dies must be a certain kind of hell.