“A bank robbery. A hostage drama. A stairwell full of police officers on their way to storm an apartment. It was easy to get to this point, much easier than you might think. All it took was one single really bad idea.”

The novel opens by situating the central plot and explaining that it is easy to fall into such a complicated situation. The opinionated and omniscient narrator underscores here how one single action can change many things on a large scale. The fact that the idea is explicitly “bad” introduces the theme of the Connection Between Anxiety and “Idiocy”.

“There are days when I can’t help thinking you never really came back from that bridge, love. That you’re still trying to save that man on the railing, even though it’s as impossible now as it was back then.”

This quote comes from Jack’s mother and reveals the root of his anxieties. He couldn’t stop the man on the bridge from dying by suicide, and ever since that moment, he has carried the burden of that guilt. That guilt led him to become a police officer, but it also stopped him from truly connecting with the people around him. He’s so driven to save people that he’s neglected his relationships and is lonely as a result.

“During some weeks in winter in the central part of Scandinavia the sky doesn’t seem to bother even attempting to impress us, it greets us with the color of newspaper in a puddle.”

The narrator describes the setting and further reveals their opinionated narrative style. The narrator often pauses the narrative to interject their personal opinions and philosophies into the story, with the narrator becoming a central character in the novel.