Tournament of Books discussion

Space to discuss the 2025 TOB contender Someone Like Us by Dinaw Mengestu.

I’m pretty well flummoxed by this one, hoping the ToB discussions will bring me some clarity as to what the heck was going on.

Still, it was definitely an interesting, thoughtful read!

Jan wrote: "I’m pretty well flummoxed by this one, hoping the ToB discussions will bring me some clarity as to what the heck was going on."

Yeah, it has a really challenging narrative to it. I'm still kind of working through it, but I really liked the blurring between the implicit author, the narrator, and Samuel. It was a little dizzying, but in a good way.

I don't know why but it really flowed for me. I get that it's moving all over the place but somehow it seemed really seamless to go back and forth and digress. Also, it's a kind of mystery. It pays off in the end.

I think I stayed with the various timelines and personages for the first three fourths or so, but then my brain wore out and I quit tracking. It’s humbling!

I really like the way the story moves backward and forward among real events, imaginings, and memories, and Mamush is one of those unreliable narrators who has difficulty telling the truth. I enjoyed the writing style and would definitely read another book by this author.

Perhaps I didn't get it, but I did not enjoy this book. I would have DNFd it had I not just DNFd Great Expections.

Jason wrote: "I don't know why but it really flowed for me. I get that it's moving all over the place but somehow it seemed really seamless to go back and forth and digress. Also, it's a kind of mystery. It pays..."

Same. I liked the fever dream aspect of it.

Just finished this one and really loved it. I'm pretty sure I kept up with it for the most part, and I relished the way it was told. It's one I can see myself rereading in the future, and I'm looking forward to the ToB judgment/discussion.

Jessica wrote: "Just finished this one and really loved it. I'm pretty sure I kept up with it for the most part, and I relished the way it was told. It's one I can see myself rereading in the future, and I'm looki..."

Yay, I'm hoping it does well in the tournament!

I finished the book this morning and found it excellent. The way the narration moved around between events and times was so well done. I'm going to have to read Mengestu's earlier work. And that final chapter was perfect.

I didn’t understand the narrative - was the narrator talking to someone not there? The ending totally confused me, and I’m usually not excited about books that make me feel slow/not smart enough for them. There were some nice lines, and I can appreciate that it was doing something interesting, but still it left me cold.

Chrissy wrote: "I didn’t understand the narrative - was the narrator talking to someone not there? The ending totally confused me, and I’m usually not excited about books that make me feel slow/not smart enough fo..."

I guess I would say you want to approach this not like a puzzle but like an Escher print - in the sense that it isn't the right question to ask whether it is a print of ducks or of fish, it's an image that transitions from one to the other. Or - it's not the right question to ask where the top of the stairs is, or how the water flows back to the top of the waterfall. An Escher print is not a problem to be solved, it's an illusion to be admired. What you want from the Escher print is to appreciate the strangeness of a waterfall feeding the channel that feeds the waterfall, or a staircase that keeps going up even as it loops back on itself, or how ducks become the white space between fish and vice versa.

In =Someone Like Us=, there are lots of those Escher-like illusions. The story and the telling of the story and the telling of the telling of the story - those things all blend and blur into each other, and the magic is in recognizing it, not in trying to work out the mechanics of the illusion.

It may still not be for you, of course....

I appreciated the beauty of the interweaving, but I felt there were some loose frayed ends that left it less tidy than an Escher print. The author set himself a really challenging structure for the telling of the story, and it seemed to me that he did not completely nail it. Even so, I thought it was pretty darn good.

To me it felt like time folding in on itself. There were several time periods. The book went back and forth and at first it was intelligible. But then the periods shifted faster and then everything was happening at once. I also like Tim’s more visual description of the book.

Just finished and really enjoyed this, despite being a bit confused at the end. I really had to slow down with the last 20 pages and even re-read the last few. In the end I was satisfied with the ending (without having clear answers). I really liked the character development and writing.

I've read one of his previous books, All the Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears, and would recommend it if you liked this one.