Anxious People: a hostage situation that's actually a support group

I read most of this in the break room over three separate nights, which honestly might be the ideal way to read it, because Backman structures the thing almost like an incident report anyway. A robbery that fails immediately turns into a hostage situation at an apartment viewing, and then the robber vanishes, and two cops are left interviewing everyone who was in the room trying to figure out what happened. The chapters bounce between interrogation transcripts and flashback and present tense, and it takes maybe thirty pages before you realize the structure is doing more work than the plot is.

My triage instinct almost bounced off this one early, I’ll be honest. The opening tone is quirky in that way that can tip over into cute if the writer doesn’t earn it. Backman earns it. Every one of these hostages is carrying something, a marriage falling apart, a suicide attempt, grief that hasn’t been named yet, and the book slowly reveals that the person holding the gun is maybe the most desperate one in the room. There’s a bridge, and a jump that didn’t happen, threaded through the whole thing, and by the time that connects to the present day plot I wasn’t expecting to feel it the way I did.

Downtime clock is a mixed bag honestly. The interrogation format makes it easy to pick up in short bursts, but Backman loves a digression, and some chapters wander in a way that’s charming when you’ve got twenty minutes and mildly annoying when you’ve got six. I needed actual debrief time after finishing this one though, sat in my car in the parking garage for a bit before driving home, which for a book that starts as a comedy about a bad bank robbery is saying something. Four stars, and I’d hand it to almost anyone on a bad week.