50 pages • 1 hour read
Fredrik BackmanAnxious People
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2019A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 41-55Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 41 Summary
The bank robber is feeling sorry for herself, and Ro suggests that they at least order some pizza to cheer her up because “in hostage films the police always provide pizza!” (179). Roger organizes the pizza delivery to feel useful.
Chapter 42 Summary
Jack and Jim search the apartment to see if Jack’s theory is true; he believes that the bank robber must be hiding in the extra space not listed on the floor plans. They eventually find an attic passageway in the closet, and Jack climbs up and finds Lennart’s rabbit head costume.
Chapter 43 Summary
Chapter 44 Summary
Jack realizes that nobody could have escaped through the small attic passageway, and he’s disappointed. Another cop comes into the apartment and says that the blood on the floor is stage blood, shattering the previous theory that it was the bank robber’s blood. This gives Jack the idea that the bank robber must be one of the supposed hostages.
Chapter 45 Summary
Chapter 46 Summary
While in the apartment where the hostage situation took place, Jack realizes that the bank robber didn’t shoot themself like he originally thought. A phone vibrated and shook the gun from the table, and it must have gone off when it fell on the floor. This further complicates Jack’s understanding of what presumably happened.
The narrator remembers when Jim’s wife and Jack’s mother died, and how “Jim aged badly” after her death (201). She was the glue that held the family together, and things have been difficult since then. Jack’s sister complicates this difficulty because she only calls him or their father when she wants money for heroin. Jack feels responsible for her because he desperately desires to save her, especially since “He couldn’t save the man on the bridge” (203).
Chapter 47 Summary
During the hostage drama, the bank robber thinks about how much she’s failed her daughters, while Zara “trie[s] not to think about anything in particular” (206). When the pizza arrives, Zara eats pizza for the very first time. She thinks it’s disgusting, but it’s a huge step for her to at least try it.
Chapter 48 Summary
Back at the police station, Jack accuses the real estate agent of being the bank robber in disguise.
Chapter 49 Summary
The narrator thinks about Jack’s mother, a priest dedicated to helping people. Jack and Jim think about her a lot. During the hostage scene, Jack was on the phone with the hostage negotiator, and Jim took the pizzas up to the apartment without his son knowing.
Chapter 50 Summary
Jack interrogates the real estate agent and keeps claiming that she’s really the bank robber. She seems flabbergasted by the accusation.
Chapter 51 Summary
The narrator claims this is “a love story. Several, in fact” (216). To explain, the narrator flashes back to an appointment Zara had with Nadia. They talk about identity, and Nadia tells Zara that she doesn’t need antidepressants to mute her feelings; Nadia believes that Zara needs to “feel more” and diagnoses her with loneliness. Toward the end of the appointment, Zara admits the personal detail that she listens to loud death metal to find peace.
Chapter 52 Summary
The story flashes back to Jack talking to the hostage negotiator. The negotiator tells a story about a hostage situation in which he was involved. He was able to free the hostages, but the perpetrator died by suicide afterward. The negotiator asks Jack why he turned down the promotion in Stockholm, but he doesn’t answer.
Chapter 53 Summary
Zara is standing on the balcony looking at the bridge and listening to her death metal. Lennart comes outside and tries to make small talk. They end up arguing slightly, but the narrator makes it clear that there’s a connection between these two unlikely people.
Chapter 54 Summary
Estelle gets in the closet with Anna-Lena and Julia. Estelle talks about her marriage with Knut to encourage the other women in their marriages. From the way Estelle talks, Julia realizes that Knut isn’t alive and that Estelle has been talking about him in the present tense as a coping mechanism to deal with his death.
Chapter 55 Summary
This chapter is a transcript of Jack interviewing Lennart. Jack wonders why the bank robber asked for fireworks as a hostage demand, and Lennart feigns ignorance.
Chapters 41-55 Analysis
These chapters illustrate Jack’s increasing frustration surrounding the hostages and the robbery. He continues to get nowhere with the hostages during their interviews, and every theory he has crumbles with new evidence. However, his frustration about the case is really a deeper frustration with himself and his self-perceived faults. He constantly thinks back to the moment when he couldn’t save the man who committed suicide on the bridge, the loss of his mother, and his inability to help his sister recover from her addiction to drugs. He feels trapped by these losses because he believes that he should be able to help and save these people in his life. As he continually fails at solving the hostage case, he feels like it’s a reflection of his failings as a person. In reality, the novel suggests, he simply misinterprets the nature of the help that is needed: The bank robber is not a dangerous criminal but simply someone struggling with the same anxieties as everyone else.
The revelation that the blood at the crime scene is fake underscores this point, as well as the broader theme of Challenging Preconceptions. The police’s assumption that the blood is real reflects their broader belief that the situation is necessarily violent. In reality, the blood is not only fake but (it later emerges) only there “by accident”—i.e., for reasons that have nothing to do with the hostage situation. It thus parallels the actions of the bank robber herself. Moreover, the fact that the hostage situation did not culminate in the robber’s suicide frames the episode as a counterpoint to the death that scarred so many of the novel’s characters. Through this contrast, the novel implies that the hostage situation presents a second chance—a way of working through some of that trauma.
In that vein, these chapters also demonstrate how the former hostages grow increasingly close during the hostage drama, developing the theme of “Stockholm Syndrome,” Captivity, and Empathy. Forced into proximity with one another, the hostages let down their guards and realize that they have a lot in common. Before the hostage situation, the characters suffered from anxieties and fears revolving around their perceived personal and relational failures. However, as the unlikely strangers talk and discover more about one another, they realize that they aren’t alone in their anxieties. This is true for the bank robber as well. She enters the hostage situation by accident, feeling like a failure as a mother. However, as the hostages show sympathy for her situation and offer encouragement, she begins to see that her situation may not be as hopeless as she thought.
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By Fredrik Backman
