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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 for.

If that doesn't make you want to grab Frederik Backman's newest novel right now and dig in, then read another poignant quote:

Because there's such an unbelievable amount that we're all supposed to be able to cope with these days. You're supposed to have a job, and somewhere to live, and a family, and you're supposed to pay taxes and have clean underwear and remember the password to your damn Wi-Fi. Some of us never manage to get the chaos under control, so our lives simply carry on, the world spinning through space at two million miles an hour while we bounce about on its surface like so many lost socks. Our hearts are bars of soap that we keep losing hold of; the moment we relax, they drift off and fall in love and get broken, all in the wink of an eye. We're not in control. So we learn to pretend, all the time, about our jobs and our marriages and our children and everything else...we just do our best to get through the day, because there'll be another one coming along tomorrow.
Sometimes it hurts, it really hurts, for no other reason than the fact that our skin doesn't feel like it's ours. Sometimes we panic, because the bills need paying and we have to be grown-up and we don't know how, because it's so horribly, desperately easy to fail at being grown-up.

Anxious People is chock full of fantastic quotes and scenes, I could go on and on, but that would ruin your experience of reading this for yourselves. I am always so impressed with how Backman can realistically write flawed characters that we all probably know in our own lives. The people you will meet in this quirky tale are not very likable. I need a likable character to love and I was a bit worried that I wasn't going to be satisfied. Backman, however, has the uncanny ability to take such unlovable people - idiots in their own ways - and make you fall in love with them. Bravo to Backman for having such a skill!

There is really much to love in this seemingly strange and chaotic affair. In Backman's story, he captures a reality of life for a group of disparate misfits with nothing in common on the surface and connects them with each other in ways that you'll never imagine. There is a pair of bumbling, not-too-swift policemen, a retired couple who flip houses to keep their marriage interesting, a young couple panicking at becoming parents, and a wine-loving elderly opinionated woman. There is also a snobby, wealthy banker who dislikes people and a silly realtor with no sense at all. The voices Backman gives these characters are so real to life that I nodded right along reading their conversations and thoughts.

I own and have read all of Backman's novels now. I'm still amazed at how he writes what people think about and maybe don't talk about and sometimes it's painful. But he also can make you laugh in the next paragraph and that's what makes him so good. It's as if he's up in our brains writing down all of our anxieties onto his pages in the words of his characters. In this story, we get the sense of all the little moments in life and how much they mean to us as individuals and collectively. It may be a story of a bank robbery turned into a hostage situation on the surface, but like the characters, there's much, much more to it than you'll ever imagine. Pick this up and read it. You won't be disappointed!!

Everyone inside the apartment had their own complexes, their own demons and anxieties.

They may not have had much in common, but they all knew what it was like to make a mistake.