People Like Us: A Novel

by Jason Mott

Longlisted for the 2026 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction
Finalist for the Willie Morris Awards for Southern Fiction
One of TIME Magazine’s 100 Must-Read Books of 2025
One of USA Today’s 15 Books You Should Read This Summer
One of Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Hot New Summer Reads
One of People's Most Anticipated Summer Books
One of Lit Hub’s Most Anticipated Books of 2025
A Late Show Book Club pick

The riveting new novel by the author of the 2021 National Book Award winner and bestseller Hell of a Book

People Like Us is Jason Mott’s electric new novel. It is not memoir, yet it has deeply personal connections to Jason’s life. And while rooted in reality, it explodes with dreamlike experiences that pull a reader in and don’t let go, from the ability to time travel to sightings of sea monsters and peacocks, and feelings of love and memory so real they hurt.

In People Like Us, two Black writers are trying to find peace and belonging in a world that is riven with gun violence. One is on a global book tour after a big prize win; the other is set to give a speech at a school that has suffered a shooting. And as their two storylines merge, truths and antics abound in equal characters drink booze out of an award trophy; menaces lurk in the shadows; tiny French cars putter around the countryside; handguns seem to hover in the air; and dreams endure against all odds.

People Like Us is wickedly funny and achingly sad all at once. It is an utter triumph bursting with larger-than-life characters who deliver a very real take on our world. This book contains characters experiencing deep loss and longing; it also is buoyed by riotous humor and characters who share the deepest love. It is the newest creation of a writer whose work amazes, delivering something utterly new yet instantly recognizable as a Jason Mott novel.

Finishing the novel will leave you absolutely breathless and, at the same time, utterly filled with joy for life, changed forever by characters who are people like us.

Genres: Fiction, Literary Fiction, Audiobook, Contemporary, Race, African American, Adult Fiction

Audible Audio

First published August 5, 2025

About the author

Jason Mott lives in southeastern North Carolina. He has a BFA in Fiction and an MFA in Poetry, both from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. His poetry and fiction has appeared in various journals such as Prick of the Spindle, The Thomas Wolfe Review, The Kakalak Anthology of Carolina Poets, Measure and Chautauqua. He was nominated for a 2009 Pushcart Prize award and Entertainment Weekly listed him as one of their 10 “New Hollywood: Next Wave” people to watch.

He is the author of two poetry collections: We Call This Thing Between Us Love and “…hide behind me…” The Returned is his first novel.

The Returned has been optioned by Brad Pitt’s production company, Plan B, in association with Brillstein Entertainment and ABC. It will air in March, 2014 on the ABC network under the title “Resurrection.”

Reviews

[Cheryl Carey · Rating 5 out of 5]

PEOPLE LIKE US

●  It's a book with a silly but meaningful cover
●  It's a witty and sharply clever book
●  It's a wacky book
●  It's a funny book
●  It's oft times a heart wrenching book
●  It's a book written from the perspective of two modern day black authors
●  It's a book written with chapters that have no names
●  It's a book written with chapters that have no numbers 
●  It's a book whose chapters are signified by two different male silhouettes, one facing left and one with a dapper hat with a feather in it's band facing right
●  It's a book of two men deeply soul searching
●  It's a book about an individual grappling with the sudden and brutal death of a sibling
●  It's a book about a group of people not knowing how to mourn a group of people brutally taken
●  It's a book that grapples with gun violence
●  It's a book about people trying to find where they really belong
●  It's a book written in a style I have never encountered before
●  It's a book with fabulous character development 
●  It's a book that inspired me to write a review in a very silly style
●  It's a book that deserves five stars
●  It's a special book
●  It's a book that deserves recognition
●  It's a book I want you to read
●  It's a book that is an advanced reader copy
●  It's a book I would like to thank Jason Mott for allowing me to read
●  It's a book that I would like to thank Jason's publisher Dutton for allowing me to read
●  It's a book that NetGalley facilitated the reading of

[Andre(Read-A-Lot) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vicious and malicious in its humor. Jason Mott is a master at bringing the funny and he doesn’t disappoint here. A novel that is part memoir, part stream of dream consciousness, part travelogue, and part social commentary. All the parts add up to a whole damn book experiment that is 100% fanciful. I don’t want to be a spoil sport but I believe the publisher blurb has done a disservice to readers, it states; “In People Like Us, two Black writers are trying…..” Wait, what? Is it two or is one writer with a dual narrative perspective? Hmmm. This may turn into a big debate come August, I fall on the dual perspective side. And I accept in advance I could be wrong, however it doesn’t read as though there is a clear delineation between two authors, maybe I need to reread. Anyhoo, a great read that takes up the question of how “people like us” fit into America. Quite an experience.

[Cindy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hell of a writer!
This one is a wild ride in the best possible way. It’s meta-fiction that reads like a memoir, and it’s one of those stories where you’re not always sure what’s real, but maybe that’s kind of the point. Jason Mott gives us two Black authors (or possibly two sides of the same man) navigating life on separate book tours. Soot, is freezing in Minnesota while visiting with college students about gun violence and loss. The other, a National Book Award winner, is living the high-profile version of that life, heading off to Europe after receiving a death threat. He is often mistaken for someone else and even introduces himself to a fan as Ta-Nehisi Coates (and signs the autograph that way), then later on as Colson Whitehead.

The story swings back and forth between their voices, and while I wasn’t instantly locked in to the narrative, the humor and sharp little insights helped me lean into it a bit more. Mott weaves in commentary on grief, fear, gun violence, and drops truth about being black in America, all while making you laugh in unexpected places.

There’s also a stalker named Remis that cuts in, shadowing the NBA winner’s life and giving an uneasy edge, but with humor. There might also be dreamlike scenarios and time travel. It’s often strange but funny, and I thought the satire was a great way to lighten up the heavy topics.

Mott’s writing is sharp, intelligent, and real-sometimes heartbreaking. People Like Us is messy, often uncomfortable, and totally unique. Even when I wasn’t sure where it was going, I was more than happy to follow. This was deeply human and absolutely worth the read.

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought this book was okay! Interesting themes related to race and racism, especially about Black adults in the United States striving for traditional (perhaps some would say assimilationist) measures of success like fame or money. Also thought Jason Mott included relevant commentary about gun violence and the pros and cons of living outside of the United States altogether.

That said, my perception of this book is that it’s more of a message book than a character-driven book. The story seemed super nonlinear, magical realism-esque, and honestly it was difficult for me to keep track of what was happening. It was thus hard for me to feel emotionally invested in a more intimate way, though intellectually I appreciated what Mott set out to accomplish with People Like Us. Not sure if I’ll check out his previous work given my experience with this novel.

[Michael -- Justice for Renee & Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gunsights

Jason Mott's "People Like Us" is an imaginative journey of two Black men, both reflections of the author, that is at once wildly creative and humorous– and deeply tragic, as well.

Gun violence is a pervasive issue in America, manifesting as both national tragedies and deeply personal losses. Soot, a middle-aged Black man haunted by the violent death of his own daughter, is currently on a national tour addressing gun violence. His next stop is a college campus in Minnesota, a location particularly poignant as students there were recently killed in a shooting. In a striking and almost absurd twist, Soot himself now carries a gun. This is America, after all.

Simultaneously, we have an unnamed writer, like Jason Mott, the winner of the National Book Award, who finds himself terrorized by a deranged spirit promising to murder him. Already having planned a European book tour, this narrator makes arrangements to smuggle a gun for protection. He is American, after all. Once in Europe, he is taken in by an eccentric French billionaire who offers him everything he desires, provided he forsakes America permanently.

The duo encounters absurd and darkly comical twists at every turn, punctuated by moments of sharp pain. While some have noted a similarity to James Everett's "Erasure," I found myself recognizing the wildly imaginative style of his "I Am Not Sidney Poitier," with insistent misidentifications and, this time, a French Ted Turner character.

The central theme is the shadow the gun casts on us. The right to bear arms has somehow morphed into a fear of not being armed. At a critical moment, one of the characters attempts to throw his gun away… and it refuses to leave. While I appreciated some very clever humor, there were times, particularly when Soot’s memories of a living daughter started falling apart, when sharing that grief was devastating to read. Like any other recipe, the right balance of extremes makes all the difference.

A wild and sometimes heartbreaking book.

Thank you to Dutton and Edelweiss for providing an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review. #PeopleLikeUs

“We're all standing in the shadows of our noblest intentions of something more -- Than being shot in a classroom in Oregon” --Guns of Umpqua – Drive-by Truckers

[Konrad · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think people’s perception of this book is going to be largely based on their tolerance for the unique narrative and pseudo-memoiric structure. Like you need to be okay not quite being able to locate your place in the two stories as bits and pieces are dropped to help you put together what’s happening.

But in the midst of that disorientation, it is definitely not a slow drag. It’s packed with Mott’s wickedly funny humor and a profundity that had me highlighting left and right.

If you’re game for trusting where Mott is leading you, you’re rewarded with powerful reflections on what it means to be American in all its inescapable brokenness. And more specifically what it feels like to be an African American navigating place and a weight of never quite belonging.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Charleston Gazette Mail, Saturday-Sunday, August 30-31, 2025.

“People Like Us” - Jason Mott, Penguins, August 2025, 237 pages.

As summer winds down you may be moved to switch from frothy beach reads or the latest spy thriller to something a bit more literary. To ease the transition between the two, consider “People Like Us.” This latest from from National Book Award winner Jason Mott is serious fiction with welcome touches of pure funny.

The book follows two male, Black writers. One, Soot, lives on his family’s land in North Carolina. He is visiting various places where there have been schoool shootings, to speak at the schools and to the communities. He is grieving the end of his marriage to Tasha and the loss of his daughter m, Mia, as she moves into adulthood.

The other writer is unnamed. He, like Mott, had just won The Big One (the NBA) and he’s on a speaking tour in Europe underwritten by a billionaire benefactor who had an incredibly interesting proposition for him. Oh, and a guy named Remus wants to kill him, but only after checking his teeth.

This is the first book by Mott that I have read, and it is chock-full of a bit of everything, even some magical realism (which I firmly believe is best left to writers named “Marquez,” for the most part.). Even still this book is fantastic.

It features a Scottish, Black chauffeur and an assistant who looks just like an imaginary friend called The Kid that the unnamed narrator had as a child. Plus an old girlfriend he discovers when she comes hurtling into his elevator, naked, while running from the wife of a doctor with whom she was having an affair, all in a hospital in Italy (the narrator was recovering from a stab wound.). Now, if that doesn’t at least pique your curiosity, I’m not sure I can do much else.

Did I mention his odd affinity for Nicolas Cage?

There is so much to love here, including a running gag that I won’t spoil, but that made me laugh every time.

Mott does an incredible job differentiating the voices of the two narrators; it almost reads as if two, distinct authors wrote the sections. Soot’s are quiet and somber, while the unnamed narrator’s are more lyrical - he had the cadences of a poet or a great hip-hop artist.

As one would expect, there is a fair amount of examination of what it means to be a Black man in Europe and in America, “…for the first time since I met him, he sounds all American. He sounds like Baltimore. He sounds like Atlanta. He sounds like Watts. He sounds like Brooklyn and the Source Awards and my dead grandmother’s chicken-and-rice recipe all rolled into one.”

And “people like us? What do we have? We don’t even have the South, which is the closest thing we’ll ever get to a homeland…I wonder what it feels like to be someplace in this world and not feel like an outsider.”

Mott’s prose is memorable, with lines like his description of Paris, “every brick looks like it’s made of old money,” and a character’s plaintive lament, “what do you do when your home doesn’t love you and all the other homes you tried to make a life in don’t love you either?”

The book will likely make my list as one of my favorites of 2025, which, as the unnamed narrator would say, is “gravy. Pure and total gravy.”

[Kasa Cotugno · Rating 5 out of 5]

As with his award winning Hell of a Book, Jason Mott defies description in this latest book. What it means to be a writer of note while a writer of color, and a National Award winner to boot. As episodes accumulate, traveling to Tuscany and Paris and concurrently Minnesota, he fills the life of two (or is it one?) winners so that at the end, the reader wants to go back to page one and read again. So much is packed in these pages, frustration and humor and time shifts and heartbreak. As I said with the earlier book, it should be required reading.

[Alena · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think I'm missing something. I loved, like one of my all-time favorite books, this author's Hell of a Book and so I could barely wait for this one. And there were moments that I recognized the honesty and brutality and beauty I associate with Jason Mott, But I spent a lot of this book confused. I think I'm supposed to understanding the switches in narration, but I didn't. I think I was supposed to recognize metaphor vs. reality, but I didn't.
What I recognized was the author's attempt to grapple with the violence that plagues America and the complicated feeling that perplex those of us who call this country home. There is no escaping that violence and that shines through in the storytelling.
I didn't love this novel, but I feel like if I tried it again in different circumstances, I might like it more.

[Bonnie G. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Last week, I reviewed the new Thomas Pynchon book, Shadow Ticket, and I started my 5-star review with the words "I am still not sure what I just read." I will start this 5-star review with one word -- Ditto.

This blend of memoir and fiction is perhaps more serious than the Pynchon book, but both use highly stylized language and dual settings in Europe and the US to provide commentaries on the country we Americans find ourselves in. A country that is comprehensively fucked. The perspectives are different, certainly. Pynchon is a monied White New Yorker who attended Cornell and rose to fame in a moment when writers could find extraordinary financial reward, respect, and fame for writing a successful book. Mott is a Black man from North Carolina who attended community college and state schools and whose rise to popularity and receipt of the National Book Award (for the brilliant Hell of a Book) have, I am sure padded his coffers, but come at a time when the margins for financial success and impact on the zeitgeist for authors are significantly reduced from where they wire in the last quarter of the 20th century. That said, there is an undercurrent of despair in both. Shadow Ticket is a low moan of anguish for a lost America, a descent, by choice, into Weimar Germany redux. People Like Us is a sustained primal scream for an America that was never good to the writer and others who look like him, and then, after a few rays of hope that we would get closer to what he calls "Ni**er-La", became worse than we could have imagined. This is a book about how White America forces Black Americans into boxes of assimilation, and about how, when assimilation is attempted, those in power reject the attempt. It is about how, as a result of each of those facts independently and the unresolvable repellent force between the two demands, Black people shatter. It is about how those Black people can take completely different paths, and still end up in much the same place. (The characters of Soot and The Writer, from Hell of a Book, are here -- both of course alter egos for Jason Mott, with slightly different paths taken.) The book is about home never being a home. Oh, and it is really funny.

I am not going to get into the story itself because I have no idea how I would even begin to summarize it. The summaries I have read are not very good, and no shade on that because it is a pretty impossible task. This one is about the journey. Those of you who like a linear plot, this book is not for you. For those of you who are looking for an experience of brilliant writing and a display of profound truth and empathy, a book that makes you work for it, this is for you. This is as important a book as I have ever read, and also a real joy -- heartbreaking, funny, profound.

And Jason, if I ran into you, I would never confuse you with Ta-Nehisi Coates, Colson Whitehead, or Ibram X. Kendi. Promise.

[Jan · Rating 5 out of 5]

As he did with Hell of a Book, Mott delivers a knockout punch of humor and tragedy that is Black American life in the 21st century.

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

As great as Mott’s Hell of a Book is, to me this one is even better. At turns hilarious and touching but always innovative, this novel looks at gun violence and racism in the wider world vs the American strains of each.

[Montzalee Wittmann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very unique book.

People Like Us
By Jason Mott
Entertaining book. It's really short stories held together by an over fiction of time travel. It is witty, thought-provoking, sad, strange, and heartwarming. I can't say I have read any book like it.

[Liz Hein · Rating 5 out of 5]

Are you afraid of America? Mott set out to answer this question in his latest novel, People Like Us, publishing August 5th. Expectations were high and expectations were met...just a hell of a book. Speaking of, as soon as I started reading People Like Us, I quickly recognized character names/themes from Mott's previous NBA winner, Hell of a Book. This isn't a sequel, but it's definitely connected, and I would absolutely read that first if you haven't already.

People Like Us follows two Black authors, both having won "the big one", trying to find peace and belonging in our current world where neither of those ideas feel accessible. One is in the midwest preparing to give an author talk at a school recently affected by gun violence, the other abroad on a global book tour. Or are they maybe the same author? This is fiction, but it is also metafiction. It feels both so real and also so unbelievable, kind of like our current realities.

Mott examines what a reader wants from a book, from an author, and he challenges us by not spoon feeding us everything here, but he also slaps us in the face a couple times to make sure we're with him. What do you do when your home doesn't love you? Is there a Shangri La for Black Americans? Why isn't there a specific word in our language for admitting the person you love is gone but you still had a good day? Or a word for a specific laugh you'll never hear again?

I loved this book. It's self awareness made me laugh (peep the medal on the cover), its plot made me think, and its prose stopped me in my tracks more than once. Thank you so much to @duttonbooks for this copy of what is sure to be a favorite of the year for me and for many.

[Carly Friedman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another brilliant, reflective, genre-bending novel by this fantastic author. This book includes two distinct but related storylines about black authors. One is touring Europe and the other is speaking with a community after a school shooting. Both deal either supernatural aspect like time travel and visions. Both also address topics of violence, racial identity, community, family, and the literary world.

It’s brilliant and humorous and very self-referential. Not sure I “got” all of it, honestly.

It’s a heavy read but I’m glad to have experienced it!

[Betsy Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Soot returns! You don’t have to have already met him in Jason Mott’s National Book Award-winning hilarious and brilliant Hell of a Book as a prequel to meeting the writer protagonist Soot as an adult in People Like Us. But I did, and even though I’m hazy on details (I read Hell of a Book a hella long time ago in November 2021), references in People Like Us brought it back and made me laugh as if I were reliving a real-life memory—which has special meaning in a book where that kind of experience is key. (Okay, no spoilers.)

So the new book:

Hilarious and on my god, the construction: how it organically grows even as it switches personas, locales, dropping into the middle of scenes. I never lost track of where I was and what was happening. It was seamless, jumping around in time, changing persons (here, I mean first to third and back again), because just soon enough, a phrase or a sentence is dropped in with such finesse you might not notice, and it orients you.

The writing is poetic without straining to be poetry. Hilarious out of honest unpredictability. Since there are two main persona protagonists, there are two slightly different voices. (You will have to read it to understand this better.) One blends a kind of wise-guy sound of 1940s movies (everybody has nicknames that apply to some characteristic—like Frenchie or The Goon or Kid—and money is “dough” and the reader is “sister”) with this poetry and present-day experience of being a Black man who, no matter what his accomplishments and education, is still stopped on the highway for DWB (driving while Black). And the other? Well, the same, less the wise guy. The overall voice (the compilation of the two) is delight and fun and radiant energy in words. I’d give a glorious sample, but the publisher is not allowing quotes until the book launches August 5th.

The story of a National Book Award-winning writer on a book tour, at home in his past, and everywhere the story goes is told in alternating timelines which readers of Hell of a Book might remember is due to the protagonist writer’s “condition” whereby he time travels. This is helped by an ingenious book design using little silhouette illustrations of the protagonist in two different forms ... with a slight revision for the final chapter.

Some Thoughts on Time Travel
Both Hell of a Book and this new book hit me straight in the heart, bypassing my brain. And I think one of the reasons for that is that any reader who’s lived enough to have a substantial inner book of history—of place, of deaths, of whatever—has the same “condition” that Soot and, I wager, Jason Mott have: the experience of time traveling. You see something, smell something, hear something, and boom! Fade out. Fade in on a scene from your past. It can be so visceral that it feels like time travel … and for all I know, it is if you think your real self is Consciousness rather than a material body. I love what Mott does with this in these two books. Everything is right there all the time. It never goes away.

Okay, back to the plot
I’m not going to give the plot for two reasons: I don’t like summarizing plots and I think it’s the writer’s job and the reader’s pleasure to experience plot. All I’ll say is that while on the book tour, Soot or someone who doesn’t mind being mistaken for every living famous Black writer (the cover copy identifies them as two people, but things are not so clear) go to Minneapolis and to Italy and other parts of “Euroland” where the language is “Foreign.” And they slip around in time back to their original home in the South. There is a compelling drama and deeply painful emotional stuff revealed with such artistry that I could never get enough in the first book, and, hence, I’m glad for a sequel. The rest is for you to enjoy as it unfolds—or more accurately, jump-cuts.

Jason Mott is a skilled technician, hilarious, and as free in writing, and in a way, dramatizing the very act of writing, as I’m sure he and a lot of us aspire to be in real life. The work sizzles with unmediated life.

[Alec Georgoff · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m sorry but I didn’t really get it. I liked Mott’s writing style and his sense of humor a lot, but I just couldn’t understand the dueling perspectives and figuring out what was and wasn’t real.

I was really looking forward to some moment of clarity towards the end but it didn’t really come. Maybe I’m just dumb? Idk

[Brian Meyer · Rating 3 out of 5]

[3.25, rounded down with great reluctance.] The digital headline of an author interview conducted by NPR shortly after the release of “People Like Us” said it with precision: “Jason Mott leans into the confusion in his latest book.”

Friendly note to fellow readers: If you prefer narratives wrapped up in tidy, linear packages, prepare to be puzzled and even occasionally perturbed by Mott’s wildly, creative and strange book — a concoction laced with magical realism, time travel and biting social commentary.
I was puzzled to the extent that it reignited memories of a Buffalo mayor who decades ago publicly branded me “of average intelligence.” I found myself skimming articles in hopes of getting a better grasp of the book's nuances. That’s when I stumbled upon the interview conducted by NPR's Ayesha Rascoe. I suddenly didn’t feel so inferior when Rascoe asked Mott: “Well, can you explain what's happening in this novel? - because...(pause)…” The two let out good-natured chuckles.

This sequel to National Book Award-winning “Hell of a Book” explores gun violence, identity, alienation, racism and Mott's belief that many Americans might be “conditioned” to their imperfect environments. Throughout this odyssey, he serves up fantastical elements in dream-like sequences.

True, “People Like Us” held my interest — if only because I held out hope the story would produce an illuminating “Eureka!” moment when confusion turned into clarity. It happened — sort of — at the very end of this weird, wild and ultimately thought-provoking ride.

[Lauren Oertel · Rating 5 out of 5]

The only problem with this book is the description (references to time travel, sea monsters, etc.). It sounds like a fantasy novel with lots of unrealistic elements, and I would have skipped it based on that description, if I hadn’t read Hell of a Book and learned that Jason Mott is a genius with a huge heart and has so much truth to share with the world. If only more of the world would listen… But more readers need to pick up this book. Ideally, shortly after reading Hell of a Book to get the full emotional impact of these stories.

I would describe it more as: Percival Everett’s mind-bending style meets the music video/song “This Is America” by Childish Gambino. But overflowing with love for “people like us” and hope for what words can offer in these terrifying times.

I marked about 100 passages in this one. Here are a few examples:

“For the right price, leaving America might just be the new American Dream.”

“Sometimes imagination is the only weapon and the only salvation we have in this world.”

“The rich hate the poor and teach the poor to hate themselves.”

“I’ve got gunpowder in my DNA.”

Don’t skip this one. Buy it now if you don’t already have a copy. And also Hell of a Book.

[Anna Holt · Rating 5 out of 5]

When Jason was on the European leg of his book tour for Hell of a Book, the readers were rather focused on his reality as a Black author from the country with a gun culture that is uniquely American. I get the sense they wanted to understand the cognitive dissonance involved in staying where guns reign, and a fear of otherness raises the stakes for many more than others—the fatal consequences of the two intersecting, of which we have seen over and over again.

Jason explained in interviews leading to the publication day, to *really* answer these kind of reader questions was to start a memoir, which evolved into the novel that became PEOPLE LIKE US. Now that I’ve finished it, I can understand his need to ironically distance himself from reality by returning to meta fiction (and bringing levity in his signature way).

In a sense, he’s been answering for a while now, arguably starting with Hell of a Book. This time though, I saw the characters as proxy for bits and pieces of himself—a little Superman here, some Clark Kent there—even the villain who, in a sense, turns on himself.

In another parallel, PEOPLE LIKE US feels like a full circle nod to Jason’s second publication from 2011—a poetry collection titled Hide Behind Me. The cover features a young Black boy exuding an air of budding confidence in an oversized cape; in the likeness of his own comic book heroes, he draws on their strength. The website for this collection features the following quote which is also fitting, in my opinion, for PEOPLE LIKE US:

“…we have only to follow the thread of the heropath. And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence; where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.
–Joseph Campbell

You might appreciate People Like Us and its experimental flare if you’re a fan of:
My Year of Rest and Relaxation
Marabou Stork Nightmares
Erasure
So Much Blue
Bunny
Kindred

And the following movies:
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Pulp Fiction and other Tarantino films
They Came Together
Everything Everywhere All at Once

[Kip Kyburz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Two Hell of a Books

[Sam Cheng · Rating 5 out of 5]

In People Like Us, we follow two narrators, and both work as writers.

Soot’s storyline is mysterious, written with a subdued voice, and set in North America. Soot and Tasha, to whom he was married, mourn their daughter’s death. Mia ends her life with a gun on their field in North Carolina. He believes he can time-travel, the way he relives old memories of Mia’s life, before she and Tasha moved to Toronto while he stayed behind in his family’s home. In his time travelling, he undertakes discerning why Mia decides to kill herself and what he could have done differently to prevent it.

The clever, unnamed author’s arc is suspenseful and set in Europe. He wins the biggie and tours across the pond with his “hunk of Second Amendment” for safety. His attitude towards Paris reminds me of how the City of Lights drew Jimmy Baldwin: both Black men preferred not to live in America. A French aristocrat proposes that the author remain in Europe for the rest of his life. He weighs the pros and cons while touring—perhaps the cost of being safe as a Black man is to write “something for a billionaire every now and then.” With the creeping suspicion that Remus, a grim-reaper-like character, will follow through with the promise of seeing the narrator’s death, the narrator hopes Europe will offer some shelter. When he sustains a knife wound, we wonder where he can escape violence. When Dylan, his PA, affectionately called The Kid, dies because the narrator accidentally catches him in his gun’s crosshairs, we may be reminded that the fatalities from guns continue to harm “people like us.”

If I remember correctly, Mott’s follow-up to Hell of a Book is less meta, though occasionally he blurs the main characters near the end of the book. I found People Like Us luminous and propulsive. At times, I wondered if Mott moved into fantasy territory when he experimentally merged the characters (both for whom I grew an attachment) and when characters freeze, stuck staring into space. To bring up Baldwin again because I’m chipping away at Boggs’s biography, Baldwin: A Love Story, the narrators wrestle with their love for America. What does home mean? And what’s their duty to home?

In his spirited book’s last chapter, Mott gives his response. Writing in first person, he shares how he bears a complex responsibility to “go back and fix it” for the people who are still there, Black and otherwise. This moved me to tears. I rate People Like Us 4.5 stars.

[Nicò · Rating 5 out of 5]

”It's enough to make her laugh, which is to say: it's everything.”

Wow. Jason Mott might have another National Book Award on the way.

The kid takes the book and he offers Soot a handshake and when they're shaking hands the kid just says four little words: "Thanks for being weird."
And Soot breaks right there in front of everyone. He falls apart.

[danni 😎 · Rating 5 out of 5]

this is not memoir but at the same it feels like it? i guess it's because it has deeply personal connections to the author's life. and while rooted in reality, it explodes with dreamlike experiences that pull a reader in and don’t let go, from the ability to time travel to sightings of sea monsters and peacocks, and feelings of love and memory so real they hurt.

it started off with two Black writers that are trying to find peace and belonging in a world that is riven with gun violence. one is on a global book tour after a big prize win; the other is set to give a speech at a school that has suffered a shooting. and as their two storylines merge, truths and antics abound in equal measure: characters drink booze out of an award trophy; menaces lurk in the shadows; tiny French cars putter around the countryside; handguns seem to hover in the air; and dreams endure against all odds.

this book made laugh and cry at the same time, i really ended up being an emotional wreck after. one moment, characters are swigging booze from a literary award, and the next, you’re hit with a line so profound that it feels like an emotional sucker punch. there is a constant push and pull humor and sorrow, joy and pain making the story feel as alive and unpredictable as real life. by the time i turned the last page, I felt changed. this book made me appreciate the fleeting, ridiculous, beautiful mess that is being human. it made me want to hug my loved ones, cry over the weight of the world, and, for some reason, Google “do sea monsters exist?”

if want a book that will make you laugh, make you weep, and make you question reality just a little bit—this is it.

5 ⭐️ thank you Jason Mott and Penguin Group Dutton.
yes, i already preordered a physical copy for me and my husband.

[Teng Thumbutu · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read every word on every page. I sighed a heavy sigh when I finished. My understanding of this book is minimal or nonexistent.

This book is so esoteric until it becomes irrelevant. The plot? seems to occur in Mott's head and did not transfer well onto the page.

I regret that I will not be able to reclaim my time that I spent reading this book.

[Michael · Rating 1 out of 5]

Too Meta?

[Nicole · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don’t think I’m quite smart enough to understand everything Jason Mott is doing in People Like Us, but I'm a big fan when a book kicks my ass, so here we are.

The book is dizzying, looping, and often deliberately disorienting: part magical realism, part metafiction, part sharp cultural critique. It feels like it shouldn’t work, and sometimes it doesn’t, but when it does, it devastates. The book’s structure, split between Soot’s gorgeously written vignettes and the metafictional, sometimes maddening “author” chapters, asks the reader to hold multiple realities at once.

Soot’s story is the novel’s heart: tender, haunted, and suffused with a kind of magical realism and structure that recalls The Underground Railroad or Song of Solomon (though, don't get it twisted... Mott is NOT Whitehead and Toni Morrison is definitely NOT a character featured in this book).

The other sections, the ones narrated by a version of “the author,” or maybe just some author, or maybe Mott himself, are trickier. They’re alternately fascinating and frustrating. There’s a performative self-awareness that at times feels like a pastiche of Vonnegut or David Foster Wallace: the ironic asides, the playful exhaustion with the whole enterprise of writing, the commentary on who gets to tell which stories. Sometimes I caught the thread and thought, "Oh, this is brilliant," and others I was exasperated by the glibness of a narrator who calls everyone "doll" and accuses everyone in Europe of speaking "Foreign."

The last third of the book got me, though. He’s doing something super interesting here, something about authorship, identity, and the commodification of pain that is both brave and honest. There’s a self-interrogation running through this book that never feels cynical, and the very last chapter had me convinced that everything I hated before I probably just didn't understand well enough.

One thing I should be clear about is that I haven't read Hell of a Book, to which People Like Us is maybe a sequel? Overall, though, I think Mott really gets me at the end here and I'm definitely ready to circle back to other things he's written.

[Shannon Kovarik · Rating 5 out of 5]

As on par for Jason Mott, he comes through with another story that mixed humor, reality, and sadness all in a five star book.

I want to preface this with I usually speed through books but for this one I took my time. I needed to really think about what I read and how it applies to the people and world around me. It made me really think about people’s impact on each other.

As a teacher, wife, and mother this book really hit home. It’s the story of two writers who take two different paths that intertwine indirectly. The story takes on some heaviness with America and the state we are in and weaves in lightness.

I teach students where English is their second language and I always worry about do they feel like they belong and how do they feel about and what home means to them. It will make me think hard about how my students and families are treated and what I can do to make them feel that they have a place here.

I won’t lie I’m kind of biased about Jason Mott’s work. His novels make me think and feel things that sometimes I’m not prepared for. Also I met him once in Ohio at our city library and listened to him talk. He is my favorite author ever, he’s actually my Taylor Swift of authors!! That dame in Ohio was me and to know that the interaction we had made an impact on him as it did me is something that I will never forget!!

Thanks to Jason Mott, the publishers, and NetGalley for making this dame from Ohio feel absolutely honored!

[Sarah-Hope · Rating 5 out of 5]

People Like Us is getting the good reviews it deserves.

However, the publicity material and reviews I've seen of People Like Us present this as a tale of two writers (or maybe just one?). People Like Us does include those writers, but what is really at the heart of the book, I think, is an examination of U.S. gun culture, its expansion beyond our borders, and its impact on Black children. It suggests that gun culture is every bit as inescapable as racial stratification—and it does this powerfully.

Really, that's all I want to say. I just want to share some appreciation for the depths it's probing.

I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via Edelweiss; the opinions are my own.

[Kerri Boland · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dnf at 60+%… my tbr stack is really tall right now and I couldn’t get into this one. It felt like a lot of navel gazing. The different characters didn’t do anything for me. I felt like there were all these things happening behind the scenes, jokes I wasn’t cool enough to be in on, and I didn’t like it. Maybe if it comes back onto my radar later I’ll try again?