A review by coralinejones
Anxious People by Fredrik Backman

3.5

I'm in this weird middle area where 28 pages in this book made me cry and I was highlighting nearly everything. I felt the words on my page with my entire heart and I had a feeling this book would destroy me while also teaching me something about myself? The people around me?

What ended up happening was this book transformed into a sitcom. A blabbering, annoying expedition about unlikeable, unrealistic, nonsensical, argumentative characters who just said and did literally anything... Because... Humor? This book wasn't funny to me.

I don't want to say my humor is strict, but I HATE corny, quirky, millennial humor and this book is just that. The interrogations (or, rather, interviews) were the WORST. I know the author and his characters were being very on the nose here by pointing out how these people are idiots, and how these interviews were some of the worst these policemen have ever given, but it became too much after a while.

It's a shame because we started out with so much heart; genuine beautiful writing from the first page. I loved how everyone's story started to mesh and combine into one. Then, like I said, it kind of just turned to shit? Like if you were an amateur painter and accidentally mixed one too many colors together. Then you tried correcting your mistakes but now your painting is one brown mess. There's still beauty here, to some, and it was going so well, initially, but the end result is what it is. Some may love it, others may appreciate it, some may give it the benefit of the doubt.