‘This story is about a lot of things, but mostly about idiots’ explains the author on the opening page. In fact it’s a story about humans battling the sometimes overwhelming but incredibly ordinary traumas of every day life.
It’s about a failed bank robber who takes an apartment full of people and the estate agent hostage and it’s about the father and son police team who try to resolve the crisis. But it’s about SO much more!
It’s incredibly funny and also devastatingly sad. It’s a rare book that makes me laugh out loud but several passages begged to be performed they were so funny.
Backman tells all his stories slowly, he likes to go back and fill in the whole life story that led up to why one character said (or didn’t say) that one thing in that one moment which might have made all the difference. So be patient. It’s worth it.
The father and son cops were my favourite characters, so brilliantly real, with all the usual father son dynamics of unspoken hopes and swallowed down dreams. Both of these influenced by the absent but deeply influential mother (deceased) and daughter/sister (distant, damaged and constantly disappointing).
The plot has brilliant moments of surprise twists. The hostages’ foibles are so tenderly and compassionately drawn I even ended up rooting for the least likeable character. Backman relies on the truth that once you understand why a person does whatever stupid thing it is they do, you can begin to care and even forgive them.
Ultimately it was a story full of hope, not at all light and frothy, it looks reality in the face and says ‘we do the best we can’.
Live Life Loved 
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