Ponder: Anxious People

Anxious People ©2019 was written by Fredrik Bachman, the same author of A Man Called Ove, a book I loved, gave five stars, and wrote a post dated 10/31/17.  I initially had been unable to get into the book A Man Called Ove and read the first two chapters three times before I finally engaged. With this novel, Anxious People, having the same author, I expected a similar slow start. However, after 110 pages into this 341 page book, I quit. I was not enjoying it at all.

The plot involves an attempted bank robbery and hostage situation that occurs during a showing of an apartment. Through interviews with the hostages by a father/son policeman duo, and a jumbled, out-of-order telling of the story, the quirky personalities of the characters are presented. The overall style is quick, disjointed, banter; it is also true that there are many quotes that could provide food for thought if my thoughts were not so preoccupied trying to figure out what the heck was going on:

In talking about father/son relationships:

That's an impossible thing for sons to grasp, and a source of shame for fathers to have to admit: that we don't want our children to pursue their own dreams or walk in our footsteps. We want to walk in their footsteps while they pursue our dreams.

A perspective on married couples

The older couple had been married for a long time, but the younger couple seemed to have only gotten married recently. 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.

It seems there is a tendency today, in TV shows and movies and books, to substitute fast, zing-zing, back and forth, ping-pong table banter, for sane, normal-paced conversations – and not just occasionally for effect, but all the time. Closed captions are not just for the hard of hearing but also for the hard of following. This novel was an effort to read, and I decide it definitely was not worth my effort. I begrudgingly give it one star. After all, I did quote from it.

★☆☆☆☆ Awful but I read most or maybe even all of it