Fredrik Backman is the bestselling author of A Man Called Ove, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry, Britt-Marie Was Here, Beartown, Us Against You, and two novellas, And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer and The Deal of a Lifetime, as well as one work of nonfiction, Things My Son Needs to Know about the World. His books are published in more than 50 countries. He lives in Stockholm, Sweden, with his wife and two children.
This is a poignant comedy about a crime that never took place, a would-be bank robber who disappears into thin air, and eight extremely anxious strangers who find they have more in common than they ever imagined. Viewing an apartment normally doesn't turn into a life-or-death situation, but this particular open house becomes just that when a failed bank robber bursts in and takes everyone in the apartment hostage. As the pressure mounts, the eight strangers slowly begin opening up to one another and reveal long-hidden truths. As police surround the premises and television channels broadcast the hostage situation live, the tension mounts and even deeper secrets are slowly revealed. Before long, the robber must decide which is the more terrifying prospect: going out to face the police, or staying in the apartment with this group of impossible people.
This story is narrated in an almost casual fashion, allowing for Backman to delve into some pretty heavy topics on the very first page. These topics range from marriage to parenthood, depression to death, and loneliness to success. There is a reliance (although not overly or in a dependent way) on rhetorical questions scattered throughout the text when one of these topics gets deeply explored. These questions cause a lot of internal reflection for the reader, on they have addressed their own relationships, their own success, their own brushes with death. I am not an adult reader and thus can't totally relate to a lot of the adulthood struggles, but I had a feeling that these really personal internal reflection questions about adulthood would have heightened my reading experience with this book. It feels like not only are the characters being understood slowly, but also the adulthood experience is being analyzed, scrutinized, and readers will end up feeling like they're not alone in not knowing what they're doing. The use of "us" and "I" pronouns amidst the third-person narration also made the story feel very fluid in who was being analyzed: the character or the reader. Whenever Backman switched pronouns, I had to wonder if he was talking about the characters? About himself? or about us, the readers? It allows for multiple interpretations of the book's meaning, of the characters, and of what kind of world we live in.
The fact that the story was set up like a mystery was very entertaining, and I enjoyed how Backman used this avenue of storytelling to set up the study of a moment. This book takes place over the course of one day, but it follows eight people throughout the course of their lives and how they reached this one day. I think it's fascinating how Backman broke open our understanding of the day so that he could explore everyone's motivations, past experiences, and future hopes. He really takes his time diving deep into the characters, making this not only a study in the moment, but a character study. Backman successfully does this by not only explaining the backstories of all the characters in prose, but also by including interviews. These interviews, while they function as a break from narration, are also seen as evidence for the police to try and figure out who's lying, and where the bank robber is. In the study of character, they allow us to see dialogue style, how the characters talk, how they interact with others within this situation, and it's fascinating that every page is dedicated to studying these characters even when it doesn't feel like it. These characters are also all so different, but Backman does each of them justice, and describes them in so much detail we feel like we know these people personally. By the end, Backman tosses together a bunch of recognizable details that ultimately allow for the story to be as poignant as the story description tells you it will be.
(*This paragraph includes spoilers for the book. Please read the book before reading this paragraph!*) The plot twists with the bank robber's identity are surprising, and almost hard to swallow at first. For the entirety of the book up until the plot twist, the bank robber is assumed to be a man, but no one ever really got a proper look. Then, near the middle but closer to the end, the bank robber's identity is revealed to be female in this very "no way, are you sure?" kind of manner. Personally, I wondered what the point was here. We had been believing the bank robber was the dad of two daughters and who was going through a divorce with his wife, and couldn't pay rent. But it turns out that the bank robber is the mom of the daughters, and that it was the husband who had initiated the divorce. Backman actually does a great job never using "he" pronouns specifically in the bank robber's backstory, and always referring to the husband as "the other parent." The way he gets around this is by utilizing the multiple-pronoun narration he's begun, and by using a lot of "you"s to describe the bank robber's situation. So, we can see how the bank robber could have been a woman, but this can be hard to swallow because it was hard to understand what Backman was trying to say here. Was this supposed to be a commentary on gender roles or gender identity? That women never rob banks so no one would expect this plot twist? That women are usually duped by their cheating husbands who now want to claim sole custody of the kids? Was he trying to say something about how women are usually left behind? Or that women have the power to regain control over their lives? I'm still grappling with these questions, only because the bank robber's character doesn't seem as in power or in control as possibly Backman wants her to be. Despite having not-robbed a bank and taking hostages, the bank robber is pretty mild, confused, and overall stomped over by the hostages. The woman isn't in power, she's just lost. So what are we as readers supposed to take away from the fact that she's a woman, other than that she's been trampled on her whole life, which is something women already know and experience? I wonder if it's because I'm not an adult reader, and I'm not catching some thematic undertone that I should. Either way, I know that these questions are something I'll continue to ask myself, because this is the kind of book that sticks with you.
The ending of this book gutted me, and made me sad yet hopeful. I highly recommend this book to people who want an intense read, who want to understand people other than ourselves, and who can emotionally dive into a pretty heavy book. For more Fredrik Backman, visit him at fredrikbackmanbooks.com.
*This review can also be found on my Goodreads page*
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