Anxious People

What Readers Say

The most consistent thing I see from readers is that Anxious People catches them completely off guard. Not in the plot-twist sense — though it has one that legitimately earns the label — but in the emotional sense. People pick it up expecting a light ensemble comedy about a botched bank robbery and a hostage situation. What they get instead is a book about how everyone is carrying something unbearable, and how the most unlikely connections can crack you open.

The praise is striking in its intensity. Multiple readers describe it as one of their all-time favorites, calling it a book that "changed" them or made them "introspect a lot of things." One reader called it "perhaps my favorite book ever." Another said it "bodged my brain." These aren't the words people use for a pleasant read — they're the words people use when something got through their defenses.

The criticism, such as it is, is almost always the same: the opening is rough. One reader put it bluntly — in the first few chapters there's a sense that Backman is trying too hard. Several people nearly put it down. Almost everyone who pushed through says they're glad they did. The consensus is that the book earns what it's going for, but it asks you to trust it first.

What surprises readers most is the humor. Backman uses dark comedy not to deflect from the emotional weight but to deliver it more precisely. The hostage-taker is as frightened as everyone else. The police investigation is genuinely farcical. And yet none of it undercuts the grief and longing running underneath it all. That combination — funny and devastating — is what readers keep coming back to describe.

Who It's For

This is the book I'd hand to someone who's going through something hard and needs to feel less alone in it, but who would reject anything that felt like therapy-in-novel-form. Anxious People doesn't lecture. It just puts a group of flawed, exhausting, secretly suffering people in a room together and lets the pressure do the work.

Readers consistently reach for it when they're depressed, burned out, at a low point, or feeling pointless — not because it's escapism, but because it takes those feelings seriously while also being genuinely funny. It shows up on lists alongside Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine, A Man Called Ove, The House in the Cerulean Sea, and The Midnight Library — books that deal with mental health and disconnection without being grim about it.

If someone loved A Man Called Ove, this is the obvious next read; Backman fans tend to move between the two freely, and several readers mentioned going on to read everything Backman has written. My Friends also comes up as a companion recommendation for readers who respond to Backman's emotional register. For readers who found their way here through Where the Crawdads Sing or Cloud Cuckoo Land — big, emotionally ambitious ensemble stories — Anxious People fits that same space.

Older readers get recommended it too, which surprised me when I saw it. It's not a young person's book or an old person's book. It's a book about people who've made mistakes they can't undo, which covers a lot of ground.

Reading Context

No translation issues to flag here — the Neil Smith translation from the Swedish is the standard English edition and it reads cleanly. The Netflix adaptation exists if you're curious, but the book's structure is part of what makes the reveal land, and that's harder to pull off on screen.

The one practical note I'd offer: don't read the synopsis too carefully. The back cover tells you more than you need to know going in. The less you know about where it's going, the better the experience.

Content warnings worth knowing about: suicide is a significant theme in this book. It's handled thoughtfully — several readers specifically praised how Backman approached it — but it's present throughout and central to the story's emotional core. If that's a difficult topic for you right now, that's worth knowing before you start.

There's no required reading order. Anxious People stands completely alone. Reading A Man Called Ove first isn't necessary, but if you've already read it you'll have a sense of Backman's rhythm and it may help you trust the slow build of the opening chapters.