Anxious People

4.5
I have so much to say about this but at the same time im speechless.
Here are my thoughts for now;
-It had so many relatable characters and I feel like everyone who reads this book will be able to relate to at least one part in it(even a teeny tiny one).
-Soo many good quotes!( I am someone who LOVES relatable quotes in books and this had soo many!
-Towards the end I felt my emotions go up and down, then back up again, then down and wow I cried a bit too.
-The reason its not a full 5 stars is coz I start getting engrossed in the story only after the first half, before that the book felt like a 3 star but that's the only prob I have LOVED the rest of it.

My fav characters are Ro and Estelle:))

Hmm.
This book came highly recommended to me and I really wanted to like it. It's the second Backmam book I read and ideally should have ticked all my favourite things - solid characters, a twisty fun plot, emotional depth, existential questions about which I spend far too much of my time on...
But I just can't get over this author's habit of forcing a story into the metaphor. I'm sorry. I do it myself too, when I attempt to write, and I hate that tendency. Instead of coming to these conclusions myself by the end, the book's symbolism had to reason itself, wrestle itself, into the “life lessons” towards the end. This is the same complaint I had about Beartown.
And yes, I appreciate the Scandanavian propensity for a puzzling plot and mysterious, confusing characters, but I couldn't keep up by the end. The majority of these characters were not fun to read (I'll give Backman that; he puts as much love into the awful people as the good ones) but sadly they didn't become better by the end. I don't know who was supposed to learn what from this but it was definitely a lesson in human nature - now if I could only understand what that lesson was.