Real Rating: 4.5* of five

I am a very, very white old man. I experience none of what Mamush does, or expects to, on a daily personal basis. My Young Gentleman Caller is half-black (he prefers lowercase to uppercase "Black"). There are times I am utterly oblivious to what that idiotic blood quantum theory of human identity means because I get none of it. What I *do* get is profiled, when traveling, as an American...some indefinable something about me is ineradicable, and inescapably American. Among anti-semites I am always assumed to be a Jew. (Among Jews as well, which can get awkward.) As a gay man, and an old one, I'm often seen as not queer enough, or just a bit too queer. Can't win for losin'.

So when I read Author Mengestu's books, I am not just pruriently peeping in on his characters' struggles with identity and its ramifications.

The great strength of Author Mengestu is his lovely language. One of my all-time favorite aperçus of his is from <I>How to Read the Air</I>: "There is nothing so easily remade as our definitions of ourselves." (Note to self: Why haven't we reviewed that one?) This book, too, is full of meaty thoughts on identity, on the mutability of selfhood, on the complexity of being alive in an interwoven web of love and fear and distrust, trying to spin new threads as old ones fray, of making the effort to stick yourself to the ones you thought you wanted to escape. The way webs form...from the center outward, directed by a design and made for a purpose...is, however, the opposite of that other great center-driven natural structure: the hurricane. These form when a depression becomes so empty that everything around it is drawn in to fill its vacant space in the atmosphere. Mamush, with the best of intentions, is a hurricane. “You’re like a donut. There’s a hole in the middle, where something solid should be,” says his wife.

He sticks to nothing, nothing sticks to him. His deep and abiding depression formed in his deeply uprooted "family." His mother and father escaped imploding Ethiopia, and in a truly terrible series of bad decisions, engendered their child Mamush. Neither, though they are friends, wants to raise a child with the other. Mamush has the ordinary single-mother experience of childhood with all its spaces and silences and absences. His father would've been absent no matter what because he is a man on a mission to help other Ethiopian immigrants starting a taxi business to employ them in the US. Tgat makes him professionally unrooted, always in motion, at the mercy of those around him, subject to their moods and attitudes in service of making a living. Mamush is his father's son. He abandons a job as a journalist...someone who observes from the sidelines...to run away from the ever-darkening US. It's the way these men live. He starts a family in France, which honestly sounds like one of the worst ideas anyone ever had. That, unsurprisingly, just presses his depression even lower down: his son is disabled, a hard, hard road for the best prepared parent. Predictably, it's a terrible stressor for Mamush. At his mother's summons to come home to DC and help her figure out where his father has got to, he's outta there leaving son and wife to struggle along without him.

It's deeply telling that he misses his plane. It's even more telling that he, on a whim with no forethought, then switches his ticket from DC to Chicago. It wasn't just a whim, really, as his parents had lived with him in Chicago before settling in DC. His unmooring from his plans, from his family, from his career, is all in service of a Quest. Who doesn't love a Quest? He's so turbulent, such a low-pressure spot in his own life, that he's attracting chaos at such a huge rate he must find a way to fill himself from the center outward or succumb to that destructive chaos.

A man in search of a center, a man whose essence is unquiet and kinetic, who now wants something he's never had and has no tools in his kit to create, is a danger to himself and others until he finds the thing that can act as solid ground. Standing still is only possible when there's solid ground under you. Then the hole formed so early in life, made from the same stuff as the edges are, is the small nugget of solidity he can stand on. From this small, awkwardly shaped piece, a center is formed, and the spinning of that web of intent, design, and adhesion can begin.

This is when Mamush says to his father: “There isn’t one story. Things start and end abruptly. Some pages are just a single paragraph. I don’t always understand who’s speaking or what’s happening. If what you’ve written is fact or fiction.”

Homecoming, homegoing, home is now within reach. It is a beautiful moment in a book that, for almost half its length, made me want to slap the hell out of Mamush, out of his parents, and maybe most of all his idiot wife who had a child with this deeply unready man. All comes out well, or at least "well" is finally in sight, for Mamush. Guaranteed? No. Delivered? Not really. But visible at last.

I think Dinaw Mengestu deserves a stonking medal for taking me on this journey that irked and annoyed me, but lured me on with his usual glorious phrasemaking music, then delivered me to an ending I could both believe completely and feel satisfied with. Kudos to you, sir.

The critics' darling and MacArthur "genius," Dinaw Mengestu’s latest novel opens with Mamush, a journalist who has covered “struggling but ultimately tenacious immigrants in America” and conflicts around the globe, learning of Samuel’s puzzling death just days before Christmas while visiting his Ethiopian mother in her new home outside of Washington, D.C. Samuel was Mamush’s father, although neither Samuel nor Mamush’s mother “had ever expected me to treat him as such. For most of my life he was my mother’s close childhood friend who, when I was six, had shown up at our apartment in Chicago in search of a place to live.” Samuel, who had come to Chicago with grand business plans, toiled as a cab driver and a parking attendant while addicted to drugs and alcohol.

What was supposed to have been a family vacation and a reunion became a solo journey when Mamush’s French wife and their two-year old son stay behind in Paris because the child suffers from an obscure medical condition. Before arriving in Washington, D.C., Mamoush makes a last minute detour to Chicago where Samuel was once arrested, an arrest Samuel refused to discuss, but which greatly impacted Mamush’s childhood. Mamush could not determine why Samuel had been incarcerated as the court records had been sealed, revealing only dozens of neglected parking tickets that Samuel had accumulated but could never afford to pay.

After paying his respects to Elsa, Samuel’s saintly widow, Mamush sets out to untangle more of Samuel’s immigrant story. He visits the halfway house where Samuel was living immediately prior to his death, with his wrecked taxi parked nearby, and peruses the books that Samuel had purchased recently and a manuscript that Samuel had left for Mamush. Mamush imagines Samuel telling him how he met Mamush’s mother and why they were not together in the U.S.

This is not a straightforward narrative. Mengestu shifts between fabulism and realism, the past and the present, within a single sentence. The story is most alive when it recounts Samuel’s homespun wisdom spawned by his disillusionment with the American dream. Samuel from the beyond implores Mamush, “Go home to your family, Mamush. Right now. As fast as you can, and once there, do everything you can not to leave.” Dinaw has captured the rich and complicated life of one person, but he also says something about the history of migration in American cities
across generations. An unreliable but propulsive read about addiction, love, loss and homecoming. Thank you Knopf and Net Galley for an advance copy of this unique take on an immigrant's tale.

A complex story about relationships and the complexities of immigrants making a life in their country of refuge. Mamush's mother emigrated from Ethiopia to the United States. Mamush was born in the USA and while he is American by birth he still struggles with his colour and heritage which some perceive as Un-American. Samuel has been a part of Mamush's life since childhood as an uncle, a fatherly figure and possibly his father. Mamush is a journalist and writer married to Hannah and settled in Paris. At the beginning of the novel, we learn that Mamush is traveling to USA to visit his mother in the midst of a rocky phase in his marriage. Also that Samuel is found dead in mysterious circumstance. Please note however this is not a mystery novel. This is a poignant rumination on relationships, legacy, identity, race, immigration and the refugee life. The concept of the novel has a lot of promise. The writing however is dense and I found it difficult to keep track of the constant back and forth shifting of the timeline as the narration progresses. This is literary fiction and good for book clubs. Definitely looking to read more from this author.
Thank you Netgalley, Knopf Publishing Group and Dinaw Mengestu for the ARC.

Someone Like Us by Dinaw Mengestu was an atmospheric novel.
The setting was fabulous and the plot was super engaging.
I found myslef flying through the pages, not wanting to put it down. It was exhilarating.
Dinaw Mengestu has written an engaging story with an interesting cast of characters.
I thoroughly enjoyed Someone Like Us.
I can’t wait for the next title!

Thank You NetGalley and Knopf for your generosity and gifting me a copy of this amazing eARC!

This was an interesting book about the Ethiopian community and how they were trying to survive they talked a lot about the different issues they had to face in America the main character in the book was born in Chicago to a woman who left this was really part of interesting of the book because it showed how people really didn't want to talk about addictions or anything this was really interesting in the book because they talked about the addictions and how people didn't want it really admit to it in that community they do not want to talk about the addictions because they try to hide it in that community then Samuel came to stay with them he had a lot of problems and you'll find out as you read the book what happened to him the boy grew up and they moved to Washington DC he was very smart but he had a lot of problems as well he became a journalist and didn't really work out very well he married a woman named Hannah and they had a baby and they lived they don't like to they do not like to talk about the addictions in that community this was a great book this was a great book about the addictions in the community in Paris but it wasn't going very well because she found out he was doing drugs so then the book starts going back to America when he left Paris to go home because Samuel wanted to talk to him they do not like to talk about the addictions in their community this was a great book

Thank you Netgalley & Knopf Publishing for an eARC ♥️

"'Someone Like Us' by Dinaw Mengestu is a real emotional rollercoaster. It's about this guy Mamush who's trying to figure out his life, his marriage, and his relationships with his family and friends.

The story's heavy, man. It's about regret, love, and how our memories can mess with us. Mengestu writes in this way that's so real and honest, it's like he's speaking straight to your soul.

This book will make you feel all the feels. It's uncomfortable at times, but it's also beautiful. It's like looking in a mirror and seeing yourself and your own struggles reflected back.

If you're looking for a book that'll make you think and feel deeply, this is it. Just be prepared for a wild emotional ride.

In one of the opening chapters Mamush was on the phone with Hannah. He had failed to show up in Rome but had asked for photos. Hannah says to Mamush that he looks for ruin (ie. ruins of Rome) and when he can't find it he makes his own ruin (ie. his life/relationships). He then proceeds to miss his plane. He spends money to buy a new ticket and then decides what the heck, he's screwed up already today, let's just make it a first class ticket. Never mind that it is more than a month of pay and that he isn't even sure that his credit card will hold it. I know people like Mamush. If things are going well for them in life and they are happy or comfortable, they will find a way to sabotage it. They can suck you down with them. The book was also confusing, jumping from past to present with little or no indication. I received this complimentary digital ARC from NetGalley and the publisher. This review is my own. I have rounded 2 1/2 stars to 3.

Mamush was raised in the United States by an Ethiopian mother but now lives in Paris with his wife and child. The book is interesting but is jarring because of the time shifts. I did not read it closely enough to truly appreciate what Mengestu did with the structure of this book but if I reread it and unraveled it, I'm sure it is brilliant

I’m not even sure how to rate this one. On one hand, I really liked the immigrant in America perspective and experience, and I thought the dialogue was really great, as well as the characters.

On the other hand… so immensely confusing. The way there were so many rabbit trails of memory or backstory without any sort of break to let you know whether you were in the present or the past or something else entirely. It was just a lot of work to sift thru, that I was not fond of. It would have been so much better if I understood what was going on or what perspective we were dealing with.

Thanks to Netgalley for the advanced copy of this book. All opinions are mine.

I really enjoyed this! It was a quietly moving novel of family relationships; I loved the complexities of Mamush's relationships with Samuel and Hannah especially, as well as of Mamush's mother's and Samuel's relationship. I was engaged throughout reading this and enjoyed the interspersed photographs. I did sometimes find the plot a bit hard to follow with the time jumps and I wish some storylines had been fleshed out a bit further, e.g., earlier in the book, there is tension between Mamush and Hannah regarding his learning French, which I found intriguing and wanted to explore further. Overall, I am glad to have read this and I'll be checking out more of Mengestu's works!

Someone Like Us by Dinaw Mengestu is a haunting, beautifully written book about a young father who is an Ethiopian-American immigrant to Paris returning home to Washington, DC, to visit his mother and father figure / family friend Samuel. The author gives a poignant description of the divide between first- and second-generation immigrants, and the difficulty Samuel faced in just getting to the point where he could try to use his gifts in America. He also describes the pain of the idea of going back to Addis and seeing what he had lost. Great character development and intriguing twist at the end. I have been a fan of Mengestu’s earlier work, and this is another engaging and moving novel that will stay with me. Thanks to NetGalley and Knopf for the eARC.

The book started out very slow paced. The narration appeared to be descriptive of mundane facts. There's no conflict or 'action' even after a significant amount of pages, however there are hints intentionally placed by the author scattered about that gives a healthy suspense and urges the reader to, against their own will, want to figure things out. There is the hope of some conflict or event that will be rewarded if the reader chooses to go on.

There is a lot of going back and forth in time throughout the book (which can be confusing at first), and at some point there is a merging of time, reality and fiction.

By part 2 of the book, the reader starts to pique interest and by the time you near the ending of part 2, you are suddenly sold on what you judged to be a tiresome narration. Everything is coming alive, the dots are connecting and there's more insight into the character's personality. As the reader goes even further, there is a realisation that it was not just random facts that the writer had been spitting out, there is now 'life' and an answer to the 'why'. It finally weaves into a story worth the time- one of an immigrant cab driver who never got to be who they wanted.

Ever since reading "The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears", I've been determined to read everything that Dinaw Mengestu writes! He excels at relating the Ethiopian immigrant experience; and the ease and finesse with which he weaves in themes of memory, loss, redemption and family, paint him as a skillful writer and teller of tales.
In the description that I read of this novel, it mentions how the main character, Mamush, confronts 'the mysteries of his childhood...and hidden family secrets'. I love the way the author chose to tell the story in a very non-linear way; almost utilizing experimental elements in his story telling.
At no time during the reading of this book did I feel I had any kind of grasp on these mysteries or secrets–yet I suspect this may have been the authors' intent. I have to admit, it kept me turning pages, wondering what, or if, anything would be revealed in the next few pages. Though much was not divulged until the end, the well drawn characters and thoughtful prose made this novel a literary and enjoyable gem. I can't wait to suggest this for book groups!
Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for the early reading copy of this book.

3.75 stars

Dinaw Mengestu's new novel SOMEONE LIKE US (publishes July 30, 2024) follows main character Mamush as he confronts his past and his relationship with his father Samuel in an insightful and ethereal way. Both Mamush and Samuel battle similar demons, and the internal struggle comes through in Mengesu's amazing writing. Unusual for a literary novel are exquisite photographs that are interspersed in the narrative, taken ostensibly by Mamush's wife Hannah/Helen (the text I read named his wife as Hannah, but Goodreads says his wife is Helen). The reading experience was made much richer, and I felt I had a connection to his wife through these photographs.

I think a 5 star read encapsulates a tremendous story combined with a tremendous reading experience, where you find yourself immersed and can't break yourself away from reading. While I thought this novel had incredible themes it explored, I wasn't transported by the reading experience. There's not a lot of plot in this novel, and I felt that it got bogged down in thoughts. In addition, some of the narrative is a bit confusing as far as time and location jumps. For that reason, I don't recommend taking this in via audio.

All in all, this is a strong novel, and I will check out more of Mengesu's backlist.

I am surprised by all the 4 and 5 star reviews for this novel. I wanted to like it myself, but I struggled to keep reading. I found the back and forth from present to past very confusing, it was hard for me to follow. Eventually I gave up almost half way into the book.

Mamush, an American-born son of Ethiopian immigrants, arrives from Paris to find that his father Samuel is dead. This triggers in Mamush a need to discover information that has been withheld from him and that he has been curious about since childhood. Who really was his father? What made him emigrate to America from Ethiopia? Why was he in prison? What was his sickness?

In a very tight time period (only 3 days), Mamush travels from Chicago to Washington, D.C., reliving his past and meeting interesting people who knew his father and who try to help him. Meanwhile in Paris, his wife, with whom he has a fraught relationship, and young son wait for his return.

Samuel is by far the most interesting and fleshed out person in the story. This charming man who means everything to Mamush also has a dark side that is never completely revealed. His fatherly ways are somewhat puzzling but give strong hints of an immigrant’s daily struggles and dependency on his countrymen.

In general, little in this story is straightforward, yet all the information is there, revealed in bits and pieces, requiring us to put it together for understanding. Personally, I could have used a bit more clarity. A delight for me were the photos, which truly demonstrated the author’s descriptive prowess.

I am not sure I really understand what is happening in this book. It is a story of Ethopians who come to the U.S. in the hopes of making a better life. It is a story of fathers and sons, family, loneliness, fear, racism, addiction, struggle and secrets. It is a story of grief and loss. It has an element of magical realism and mystery that for me never resolved. it is a fine piece of writing, but I feel unsatisfied that I am not seeming to process the novel's conclusion.

Someone Like Us is a breathtaking novel in which we follow Mamush from his home in Paris, where his marriage is suffering, to an Ethiopian community outside of Washington. DC. Samuel, whom Mamush knew growing up as a family friend, but who is in reality his father, has just been found dead in his garage. Mamush sets out to pay his respects to Samuel’s wife and to discover the secrets behind Samuel’s relationship with his own mother. Beautifully written, the story gains from the scenes in which Mamush hears from Samuel’s ghost, the slow revelation of the truth about Mamush’s childhood, and his ability to finally put words to things he was told he could never say. An intricately built book about fathers and sons, secrets and ambitions.

While Mamush is an American citizen, born and raised in the U.S., his mom and close family friend/father Samiela and his wife Elsa are Ethiopian immigrants and their history and experiences frame the story and experiences. We get glimpses of his courtships and his wife’s Hannah’s experiences but at times a lot of that including his new role as a father is overshadowed and not deeply addressed.

This Reminds me of Jonathon Escoffery's debut novel ( If I Survive You) in its raw and real insight into the immigrant experience in America. While this includes some of Mamush’s experience in Europe/Paris, as he goes to learn more about Samuel, there is such a story about the concept of the American dream as experienced by immigrants.


At times, it felt a bit confusing as it jumped all over the place as the timeline was alternating chapters between the past and present and it felt like a bit more of a mystery than I was expecting, but the writing and the story really helped this novel shine while telling a timeless story.

"Someone Like Us' by Dinaw Mengestu was SUCH a good read, one of those that I'll be thinking about for awhile.
Taking place over he course of three days, with a marriage on the verge of collapse, Mamush returns from Paris to the Ethiopian community in Washington, D.C to reconnect with family. Events occur that change the course of this trip and send Mamush on a cross country journey asking hard questions from his past.
For me, this was a story about regret, and family and community, and most of all how a larger than life character in your world can be viewed so differently as an adult vs the person you thought you knew as a child. Those feelings of realization that maybe we built this someone or someone's into an entirely different person based on memory.
There is a bit of a twist toward the end that makes you reconsider parts of the story you've read - I love when that is pulled off smoothly, and it is here.
Absolutely worth checking this one out (and Mengestu's other works if you haven't yet).