“God doesn’t protect people from knives, sweetheart. That’s why God gave us other people, so we can protect each other”. I wanted to start this article with this exact quotation as no matter how anxious these characters were, they showed care, empathy, and understanding towards one another.
“Anxious People” by Fredrik Backman is a book that blends humor and heartfelt moments to explore human relationships and the nature of anxiety. The story centers around a failed bank robbery that turns into a hostage situation during an apartment viewing. All the anxious people characters are different, each one of them is dealing with their own personal struggles and anxieties.
Let’s dive into the nature of each character’s backstories, fears and connection they had with one another.
The man who jumped
On of the main let’s say the key character of this story is the man who jumped off the bridge. I wanted to give credit to this man, and mention him the first in my list of Anxious people characters.
The author brings this man up in the story as his death has a deep influence on the small boy who later would investigate the whole story with the bank robbery. He was also somehow connected with Zara, one of the characters of the story, whom the man on the bridge sent a letter with the words “It is not your fault”.
The man on the bridge, whose name we do not know, had two children. He used to have a good job, he even set up his own relatively successful business, and bought a nice apartment for his family. Later he invested all his savings in shares in a real estate development company, so that his children could get even better jobs and even nicer apartments when they grow up, so that they could have the freedom not to have to worry about money at all.
All the financial experts promised him that shares in the real estate development company were a safe investment, however not all the predictions were to be true.
There was a financial crisis somewhere in the world and a bank in New York went bankrupt, and far away in a small town in a completely different country this man on the bridge had to face the consequences of that and lost everything. He saw the bridge from his study window when he hung up after the phone call with his lawyer and decided to commit a suicide.
The man drove his children to school as if nothing had happened. He whispered in their ears that he loved them. Then he drove toward the bridge, walked out onto the bridge and climbed up onto the railing, and jumped. We learn about this from Jack who saw this man, talked to him and desperately tried to persuade him not to jump.
The robber
Spoilers ahead! I am going to tell you who the robber was, so if you do not want to know, skip this part. In fact we do not know who the robber was, we do not even know this character’s name, but at some point we realize that the robber is not a he but a she. She had a rough childhood as her mother was an alcoholic. The robber and her mom were even evicted from their house and she swore never to have children, but soon she got married and ended up having two daughters. The drama started when her husband had an affair with her old boss and sent her a short message “You need to pick up your things”. He kicked her out, actually, and moved in together with this boss lady to the same apartment, because it was only in his name. “She didn’t want to make a fuss or cause… chaos. For the children’s sake”.She took the things to the neighbor’s storeroom where one day she found the pistol. She and everybody else during the whole story thought that the pistol was not real while in fact it was.
That is where the brilliant idea of robbing the bank came into her mind.
Jack
Jack looks barely 20 but he is definitely older than that. He is an enthusiastic young man who feels responsible for his old colleague slash father. Their relationship is complicated. Jack had almost nothing in common with his father Jim.
Actually all Anxious people characters’ life is complicated. The author indeed spend some quality time on working on each of the character.
Jack was a child when he saw the man who jumped off the bridge, some time later Jack saw another girl on the bridge, who did not jump and as we know later from the story that this Anxious people character was Nadia, Sara’s psychologist.
Jack made her up not to jump and it was that day when he decided to become a policeman. Neither of his parents wanted him to become a policeman but they also did not become obstacles on his way. Jack had a sister who was addicted to drugs. She was 7 years older than Jack and one day she just woke up and left. Jack had withdrawn all his savings, which he was planning to use to buy an apartment, and used them to pay for his sister’s treatment in an exclusive private clinic. Jack drove his sister there. She checked herself out two weeks later, too late for him to get his money back. They sent her money every time she called, every time she pretended she’s going to come home. But she never came, not even for her mom’s funeral. This shows the human qualities of this character and I have to state that no matter how complicated all the other Anxious people characters were, they were all kind and caring. Jack’s mom was a priest and she died in the hospital when Jack was quite young. She was an incredibly reasonable and kind woman too. At the very end of the story though Jack and Jim decide to drive 10 hours to visit the sister.Jim
We do not know how old Jim was but we do know that he was kind and patient. Jim was born in a generation that regarded computers as magic, so when Jim wrote a report he hit every key all the way down very deliberately, then checked the screen at once to make sure it hasn’t tricked him, and only then did he press the next key.
Jim thinks about the same bridge all the time, because during his worst nights he dreamed that it was Jack who jumped instead. This characters was anxious all the time, because being a parent is obviously the hardest of all the jobs.
He was the one who came with the idea to hide the robber in the neighbor’s empty apartment. When he learnt about the robber’s situation he was filled with sympathy and compassion towards her.
He was a loving husband who could not make peace with the idea that his wife passed away, but he was also a caring father who always helped his son and his addict daughter and was hopeful for the future. He always thought that the business he is in is tricky and never wanted his son to become a policeman.
Zara
Zara probably is one of my beloved Anxious people characters. She’s somewhere in her fifties, and beautifully dressed. She was never interested in buying apartments. She has recently been seeing a psychologist, according to whom Zara was suffering from loneliness. “Viewings of middle-class apartments.” was Zara’s hobby. According to her it was exciting because a lot of the apartments looked like the people who lived there.Zara was an anxious person, she avoided eye contact, refused to shake hands. And she couldn’t help compulsively straighten the photograph on the bookcase every time the psychologist moved it out of position on purpose before each session.
Zara worked with numbers. She worked as a bank director. From the context of what she speaks with the psychologist we understand that there was some sort of rejection of the loan for one of his clients. And taking into account the fact that she felt guilt and carried a letter from someone we assume that “someone” is the man who jumped off the bridge. Zara carried the letter around with her in her handbag, every day. She’s only been down to the bridge once, the week after the man on the bridge climbed onto the railing, she saw a girl (Nadia) climb up onto the same railing, and a boy (Jack) who rescued her. Zara walked out onto the bridge and found the girl’s wallet and ID card with her name on it. Zara has spent ten years following Nadia’s life and education and the start of her career in secret, from a distance, because she’s never dared approach her. We also see how the letter received from the man on the bridge that said “It was not your fault” is being thrown under the same bridge by Zara at the end of the story. Hopefully she finds peace and a friend in the name of Lennart.Anna Lena and Roger
“This old couple had been retired for a few years now, but clearly not long enough for them to have gotten used to it. They were always stressing about something, but without having anything they truly needed to hurry for”. I felt like quoting this.
Anna-Lena was a woman with strong feelings, and Roger was a man with strong opinions. They kinda had a hobby to write too detailed, one-out-of-five-star reviews of household gadgets (or theater plays, or tape dispensers, or small glass ornaments) on the Internet. Sometimes, of course, they hadn’t even tried out the gadgets in question, but they weren’t the sort of people to let that stop them from writing a scathing review.
Anna Lena was a senior analyst for a big American industrial company. She was a smart, better-educated person in this apartment, we learn this from the conversation between Lennart and Zara. When their kids were young his career started to take off, but hers was going even better, so Roger turned down a promotion so he could spend more time at home with the children, and she could go on all her business trips. It was only going to be for a few years, but her career started to go even better while his was treading water, and the more difference there was between their salaries, the harder it was for them to swap places.
When the kids had grown up and Anna-Lena had accomplished all her goals, she turned to Roger and said ‘Now it’s your turn.’ But he wasn’t offered any more promotions. He’d got too old. They didn’t have any way of talking about that, because they’d never practiced the right words. So now she’s trying to make it up to him by moving all the time and renovating apartments, all so they have… a project in common. Roger has no kids to look after anymore, so he feels worthless. And Anna-Lena just wants a home.
Ro and Julia
The younger pair from Anxious people characters were Julia and Ro. “One of them was blonde, the other had black hair, and they were squabbling noisily the way you do when you’re young and think that every feeling uttering about in all your hormones is completely unique”.
Julia was the one who was pregnant, and Ro was the one who was irritated.
“One was dressed in clothes that looked like she’d made them herself out of capes she’d stolen from murdered magicians, the other as if she sold drugs outside a bowling alley”.
Ro liked birds and kept them in the cages which irritated her wife Julia. Julia was engaged when she met Ro. Ro came to her shop when her fiancé was in Australia. She came to buy tulips from Julia almost every day and could make her laugh.
Soon Julia broke up with her fiancé and chose Ro as a life partner.Estelle
She was an 87 year old woman. Estelle was married to Knut. When her husband was in sickbed she took care of him and after his death she was never the same as before. According to her she “had an affair” with her neighbor, while in fact all they were doing is to exchanged books.Her neigbour read a lot. He always had a book tucked under his arm whenever they met in the elevator. He read such wonderful things.They started exchanging books and making notes on them which according to Estelle acted like little love letters between people who can only explain their feelings by pointing at other people’s. His neigbour one day gave her the key to his apartment just in case. Estelle kept that key and that’s what helped the robber to hide in his apartment and leave the building unnoticed.
Later Estelle offered the robber to move to her apartment with her two daughters. Since Estelle’s daughter did not want to move there, the young woman actually rents the whole apartment from Estelle’s daughter, and then Estelle rents a room from her for the same amount: six thousand five hundred.
Lennart
The man dressed as a rabbit disrupted viewings, he was a professional disrupter. He even had a card: “No Boundaries Lennart Ltd.,” it said. The Ltd. indicated the seriousness of the business.
He was also an actor and being the disrupter was not his only job. Although he did not remember the names of plays he was in and was even misspelling them. Despite this he was a funny and caring character who was very much interested in Zara.
Lennart knew the story of Anna-Lena and Roger and was very clumsy and romantic.
Realtor
The realtor was a very unconfident character who wanted to mentally prepare herself to meet the people interested in buying the house when the robber took them as hostages.She hides in the closet then sees the hatch in the ceiling, climbs up and hides herself there. When Lennart wanted to check the hitch he discovered her and left his rabbit head in the hitch. We do not know much about her as she was hiding most of the time besides the fact that she just like the rest of the Anxious people characters was kind and ready to help the robber in need.
Nadia
Nadia the psychologist is the same teenage girl who was going to jump off the bridge but was persuaded not to do it by teenage Jack. It was the week after the man had jumped to his death from the railing where she was standing. She knew next to nothing about who he was, but she went to the same school as his children, and everyone was talking about it. That was how she got the idea. No one can really explain, either before or after, what makes a teenager stop wanting to be alive.
She sat in a classroom full of her contemporaries, looking like everything was the same as usual, but inside “she was standing in a forest screaming until her heart burst”.
Jack just rushed over and pulled her down with such force that she hit the back of her head on the tarmac and was knocked unconscious. She woke up in the hospital. Everything had happened so quickly that she had only caught a glimpse of the boy rushing toward her out of the corner of her eye. When the nurses asked what had happened she wasn’t even sure of that herself, but the back of her head was bleeding.
So every day after that she tried to understand the difference between herself and the man who had jumped. That drove her to choose a profession, a career, a whole life. She became a psychologist.
Good thing is that at the end of the story they meet due to Zara’s help
Why were Anxious people characters anxious?
Jim was seriously bothered because he was someone’s father, carrying the weight of responsibility and the fear of not being able to protect his loved ones.
Zara was anxious because of the guilt she had carried for years, and because her loneliness amplified that guilt, leaving her feeling disconnected from the world.
Anna-Lena was anxious because she always wanted Roger to fulfill his plans, even though deep down, she didn’t want to follow the path he desired for them.
Roger was anxious because he was too obsessed with renovating and reselling apartments, using these projects as a way to distract himself from confronting deeper, unresolved emotions.
Ro was anxious because she didn’t know how to nurse a child, fearing she wouldn’t be a good mother and that she would fail at one of the most important roles of her life.
Julia was anxious because she sensed Ro’s inner struggle, and the uncertainty in their relationship made her worry about the future they were about to embark on together.
The Realtor was anxious because she lacked confidence and constantly feared that her failures at work would define her, making it hard for her to feel successful or valued.
Lennart was anxious because he had been hired to sabotage the apartment viewing, but he didn’t anticipate the moral dilemma and the complications that would follow his actions.
Estelle was anxious because she was haunted by the memories of her late neighbor and the unfulfilled potential of their platonic relationship, which left her feeling a profound sense of loss.
The bank robber was anxious because of the overwhelming desperation to secure a better life for their daughters, a desperation that led to the ill-fated decision to rob a bank.
Ultimately, all the characters in Anxious People were anxious because they were copping with the their own insecurities, regrets, and the fear of not being enough—not enough as a parent, a partner, or a professional.
