Anxious People

Jim is an older cop guided by his own sense of morality rather than his duty as a policeman. While his son, who is also a cop, approaches everything according to the rules, Jim acts in relation to his heart. He continually sends money to his daughter, hoping that she will use it to come home and recover from her addiction, and he allows the bank robber to escape instead of apprehending her. He believes the best of people, a quality he learned from his late wife, who was a priest. He misses her, loves beer, and is a supportive and encouraging father. He is constantly confused by the disconnected way that younger people seem to live: Deeply dedicated to his wife despite their small fights, Jim sees young couples breaking up all around him because they have limitless other options online.

The bank robber is a woman whose sense of loss and desperation drives her to attempt to rob a bank in the hopes that the funds will prevent her from losing her daughters. Her husband cheated on her with her boss and left her unhoused and penniless, and he threatened to keep her daughters unless she could support herself. She didn’t fight him because she didn’t want to make her daughters feel like they were in the middle of everything, so instead she robbed a bank in the hopes of being able to pay for her apartment and keep her daughters. This gains the sympathy of the people she accidentally holds hostage—they see that her faults and mistakes are like their own, and they realize that she needs grace and a second chance just like they do. Her desperate and poorly thought-out actions are thus key to the novel’s exploration of the Connection Between Anxiety and “Idiocy”.

Zara is a bitter, older banker who loves wealth and hates people without money. She starts seeing a psychologist, Nadia, because she wants a sleeping pill prescription. She is secretly considering death by suicide and believes that sleeping pills are her only viable option. She has also been secretly stalking Nadia for the past 10 years; she witnessed Nadia’s suicide attempt on a bridge, which fascinated Zara, as she wanted to discover what made Nadia keep living. As Zara grows closer to Nadia and endures the hostage situation, she slowly overcomes her deepest anxiety and releases her feelings of guilt about the suicide of the man on the bridge.

Julia is pregnant and hoping to buy the apartment that the realtor is showing at the beginning of the novel. She is short-tempered and argumentative, especially with her wife, Ro. While held hostage, she contemplates her marriage and questions whether she and Ro are meant to be. By the time she’s released, she feels more in love with Ro than ever and is more hopeful about becoming a mother.

Ro’s wife, Julia, describes her as an absent-minded hippy who can’t decide on a direction in life. She loves Julia, but she’s terrified of becoming a mother and worries that she won’t be able to handle the responsibility. She makes friends quickly and makes Julia laugh constantly, but deep down she feels inadequate in most areas of her life. She’s initially hesitant to buy a new house with Julia because she feels incapable of making decisions without her father, who has dementia.

Estelle is an elderly woman who is viewing the apartment on behalf of her daughter. She claims that her husband is parking the car, but later it’s revealed that he passed away and that she’s the owner of the apartment. She arranged the showing for the evening before New Year’s Eve because it’s the time of the year when she misses her husband the most. She befriends everyone in the apartment and offers them stories and snacks, and she eventually invites the bank robber to live with her because she sympathizes with her situation. Though she loved her husband fiercely, she admits to once having had an emotional affair with a neighbor who shared her love of literature.

Anna-Lena initially seems like a submissive wife who does everything her husband, Roger, desires. However, she eventually reveals that she once held a high executive position in her career while Roger cared for their children and didn’t follow his own career goals. Their past dynamic is why she is submissive to Roger now and tries so hard to make him happy—she feels guilty that he never followed his own path when they were younger. She wants him to feel like he’s winning later in life, and it’s her way of showing him her love.

Roger is a domineering husband who talks over his wife, Anna-Lena, and doesn’t respect her opinion. However, it’s eventually revealed that he secretly feels inadequate in their marriage. Anna-Lena always had a high-paying career, and he always took care of the children. Now that the children are older, he feels like he doesn’t have a purpose. Buying apartments and renovating them with Anna-Lena makes him feel useful. Anna-Lena continually defends him to the other hostages, explaining that he is sensitive, with a big heart, and is guided by his own principles.