Study Guide for Book Clubs: Anxious People: Study Guides for Book Clubs, #47

By Kathryn Cope

An essential tool for all reading groups!

No reading group should be without this book club companion to Fredrik Backman's best-selling novel, Anxious People. This comprehensive guide includes useful background to the novel, a full plot summary, discussion of themes & symbols, detailed character notes, 30+ thought-provoking discussion questions, and even a quick quiz.

Study Guides for Book Clubs are designed to help you get the absolute best from your book club meetings. They enable reading group members to appreciate their chosen book in greater depth than ever before.

Please be aware that this is a companion guide and does not contain the full text of the novel.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kathryn Cope
• Release date: Dec 28, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393225805

Kathryn Cope

Kathryn Cope graduated in English Literature from Manchester University and obtained her master’s degree in contemporary fiction from the University of York. She is the author of Study Guides for Book Clubs and the HarperCollins Offical Book Club Guide series. She lives in the Staffordshire Moorlands with her husband, son and dog.

Book preview

Introduction

There are few things more rewarding than getting together with a group of like-minded people and discussing a good book. Book club meetings, at their best, are vibrant, passionate affairs. Each member will bring along a different perspective, and ideally, there will be heated debate.

Nevertheless, a surprising number of book club members report that their meetings have been a disappointment. Even when their group enjoyed the book in question, they could think of astonishingly little to say about it and soon wandered off-topic altogether. Failing to find interesting discussion angles for a book is the single most common reason for book group meetings to fall flat. Most groups only meet once a month, and a lacklustre meeting is frustrating for everyone.

Study Guides for Book Clubs were born out of a passion for reading groups. Packed with information, they take the hard work out of preparing for a meeting and ensure that your book group discussions never run dry. How you choose to use the guides is entirely up to you. The ‘Background’, ‘Style’, and ‘Setting’ chapters provide useful context which may be worthwhile to share with your group early on. The all-important list of discussion questions, which will probably form the core of your meeting, can be found towards the end of this guide. To support your responses to the discussion questions, you will find it helpful to refer to the Themes & Symbols, and Character sections.

A detailed plot synopsis is provided as an aide-memoire to recap on the finer points of the story. There is also a quick quiz – a fun way to test your knowledge and bring your discussion to a close. Finally, if this was a book that you enjoyed, the guide concludes with a list of further reads similar in style or subject matter.

This guide contains spoilers. Please do not be tempted to read it before you have finished the original novel as plot surprises will be well and truly ruined.

Kathryn Cope, 2020

Fredrik Backman

Fredrik Backman is a Swedish author and was born in 1981. He lives in Stockholm, Sweden, with his wife and two children.

Backman started his writing career as a columnist for a Swedish magazine, while also working weekends and night shifts as a forklift truck driver. At the same time, he began a blog which humorously documented his pet hates. The blog proved popular and inspired his debut novel, A Man Called Ove.

The eponymous hero of Backman’s first novel was a grumpy, suicidal middle-aged man. For this reason, the book was rejected by several publishers as unmarketable. In 2012, however, a Swedish publishing house saw its potential and Ove became an overnight success in Sweden. Four years on, the novel had been translated into nearly 40 languages and sold millions of copies across the world. The inevitable film adaptation was nominated for the best foreign picture at the Academy Awards. An English-language adaptation is also currently in production, starring Tom Hanks.

Backman followed Ove with the equally quirky My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry. A novel about intergenerational relationships, it follows the adventures of Elsa, a seven-year-old girl. Elsa is bequeathed the task of delivering apology letters to everyone her late grandmother ever wronged.

The next novel Britt-Marie Was Here, again demonstrated that the everyday lives of the over-forties could be spun into bestselling material. Britt-Marie is a sixty-three-year-old with OCD who is convinced that no one will miss her when she dies. On impulse, she leaves her unfaithful husband and moves to a small town where she finds fulfilment coaching an unpromising children’s soccer team.

Beartown (2016) and its sequel Us Against You (2017) revolve around an isolated Swedish community whose inhabitants are obsessed by ice hockey. A shocking act of sexual violence sorely tests the townspeople’s loyalty to the game and each other. Both novels were inspired by Backman’s lifelong passion for the sport.

Anxious People (2019) is Backman’s most recent novel. Like so much of the author’s work, the story focuses on ‘ordinary,’ small-town characters with humour and compassion. 

As well as novels, Fredrik Backman has published two novellas and a work of non-fiction. Things My Son Needs to Know About the World (2019) is a collection of musings on life and fatherhood.

Background to the Novel

Anxious People is directly informed by the author’s own life experiences. Through his characters, Backman explores his own struggles with anxiety – something he admits to suffering from since childhood.

As a young man, the author’s anxious tendencies were exacerbated when he was shot in the leg during a robbery (an experience he describes in Things My Son Needs to Know About the World). The incident left him feeling scared of everything, and he sought therapy. Backman uses his experience of armed robbery in the novel but spares his characters the trauma of being shot. Instead, he features a gentle bank robber who has no intention of shooting anyone and does not even believe her pistol to be real.

In 2017 Backman experienced another intense period of anxiety which led to a breakdown. His symptoms included panic attacks, stress-induced nosebleeds and severe lapses in memory. On a couple of occasions, the author ended up in hospital believing he was having a stroke. Again, he consulted a psychiatrist. At the end of Anxious People, the author thanks the psychologists and therapists who helped him during these crises.

Backman has revealed that career pressures brought on his 2017 burnout. Unprepared for the phenomenal success of A Man Called Ove, he had trouble adjusting to his role as a celebrated author. Committed to a seemingly endless cycle of interviews and publicity tours, he struggled to find the time to write. Despite his success, he