While this is the second time I’ve read Anxious People, it’s the first time I realized that this is the same author from A Man Called Ove, which is also an excellent read.
Anxious People follows a bank robber, turned hostage taker and the people in the apartment they take hostage by accident. These people turn out to be more intertwined than you’d think as well as the “worst hostages ever” in the eyes of the hostage taker.
One of the biggest highlights of this book for me is the truth embedded in the story like the quote below.
“Do you know what the worst thing about being a parent is? That you’re always judged by your worst moments. You can do a million things right, but if you do one single thing wrong you’re forever that parent who was checking his phone in the park when your child was hit in the head by a swing. We don’t take our eyes off them for days at a time, but then you read just one text message and it’s as if all your best moments never happened.”
or
The truth of course is that if people really were as happy as they look on the Internet, they wouldn’t spend so much damn time on the Internet, because no one who’s having a really good day spends half of it taking pictures of themselves
There are a number of other sections that stop and make you think about life in general which I’ve captured.
I highly recommend this book and will have it on my list to read again in the future.
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