This is a novel about love.
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The love of a father for his son, the son for his father. The love of a mother for her daughters, her daughters for their mother. It is a book about married love, and love that exists but is not acknowledged.
It is also a book about a crime, the armed robbery of a bank, and the taking of seven hostages, and the fate that befalls the hostages before they are released.
It is a book about the police investigation and the witness statements the police took from all the hostage victims.
It is also a crime mystery to be solved. The crime is committed in a small Swedish town, without a name.
It is also a book about being a parent, and, possibly, about being a child. The theory runs through the book that it is awfully difficult to be a good parent. Or a good child, for that matter.
But it is clear, eventually, that good parents abound in this book because most of those finding parenting difficult are filled with love.
This is not a book of Scandi noir. Indeed it is precisely the opposite. It is screamingly funny - laugh-out-loud funny. It is a book about idiots.
The residents of Stockholm apparently believe that Swedes who do not live in Stockholm are all idiots.
The citizens of Sweden who do not live in Stockholm believe that all the residents of Stockholm are idiots.
There are, in fact, few, if any, idiots in this book. It is peopled with characters who are sad, scared, flawed, secretive and really anxious.
But it turns out they are mainly anxious about being good people and doing what is right, helpful and useful. They are anxious, too, that people should not suffer.
Anxious People is probably the best novel I have read this year and, in these anxious times, most of us are doing a lot of reading, much of it fiction.
This novel would stand out in any company.
The seven hostages, if we are just to go by their witness statements to the police, are confused, foolish and quite hopeless at observing and remembering what they have just endured.
They may frustrate the reader but stick with them. They will surprise you.
A great deal is revealed about these people and the reader comes to know each of them intimately. They will always surprise you. There is much more to each of the hostages than might, at first, appear.
This book is so cleverly and so wittily constructed that the surprises will keep the reader's attention to the last page.
Who would not want to read about love in a time like this?