A review by jenkepesh
Anxious People by Fredrik Backman

I haven't read all of Backman's books, but those I have are all written with the same strong authorial presence: The third person narrator-commenter. In two of his books, Beartown and Us Against You, this voice rendered the stories into jeremiads, and helped both to create tension and to provide distance from a narrative that might otherwise have been claustrophobic. In the other, his much acclaimed, A Man Called Ove, I found this voice, combined with the irascible title character, to be written with a heavy hand. Ultimately, I did enjoy Ove, but only after an uncomfortable first half (or more). And so it was for Anxious People, which again employs the stentorian narrator throughout, and again employs a mix of quirky characters hiding old sorrows, hapless characters with secret strengths, and Big Pointy Signs to the way our society is falling into ruins on the whole, while being redeemed on the personal scale through small risks of kindness and connection. I really had the itch to abandon this book for the first half. But Backman pulls off endings very well, so that the last eighths made me glad I'd read it. I wish Backman would try a less heavy-footed tromper of a narrator; I'd love to see what that book would be.