“You look for ruin. And if you can’t find it, you make it.”
My top read of the year came as a surprise right at the tail end of December. I was gifted Dinaw Mengestu’s Someone Like Us (Knopf 2024) by the publisher earlier this year. With life in the way, I didn’t get around to it as quickly as I had wanted, but I picked it up just after Christmas. Boy, am I glad I did. Certain books just tick all my boxes, and this one did.
Meet Mamush, our extremely unreliable narrator, born in the US to a single woman who’d fled her Ethiopian home and now living in Paris with his wife and infant son, unable to chase the demons that are generational. He’s on his way back to the States to visit his mother and Samuel, the father figure who undoubtedly shares his DNA but doesn’t get the title, and decides to detour to Chicago, where they’d all lived before moving to DC. The novel takes us along his journey, as he walks into the past and his memories, and Samuel’s life unfurls, mingling into Mamush’s memories, like the flag of a country Samuel can’t bring himself to return to.
We know from the first few pages that Samuel has been found dead in the garage before Mamush arrives. Someone Like Us is brilliantly woven, taxis and maps continuously grounding us and Mamush as he struggles with the present, the past, and escaping them both while trying to find answers as to why Samuel was found dead in the garage, an apparent death by suicide.
I’ve seen no buzz for this book, and I am floored. I’ve read a lot of prize winners and nominees for various literary awards this year, and this novel, by leaps and bounds, is my top read. Everyone should read this book.
A Girl Named Tommi 