People Like Us

The scathing latest from Mott (Hell of a Book) follows two Black writers from North Carolina as they grapple with the violence of American society and the mixed blessings of success. Soot, whose story is told in the third person, is invited to speak at a college in Minnesota that was recently the site of a mass shooting (“It’s all going to be okay, now that you’re here,” says the school representative who picks him up from the airport). In his writing and public appearances, he’s known to “speak to grief,” having lost his daughter Mia to suicide when she was 16. Mott alternates the story of Soot’s college visit with that of a writer who bears similarities to Mott (his name is revealed near the end) and who buys a Colt .45 (a gun he chooses because it’s “as American as apple pie”) to protect himself after receiving death threats. When he’s offered a Faustian bargain from a French billionaire—patronage for life, on the condition that he never return to the U.S.—he bitterly accepts and moves to Paris (“For the right price, leaving America just might be the new American Dream,” he reflects). There, the novel’s mischievous humor gradually gives way to a frightening fever dream. Mott’s satire is thoroughly uncompromising, which makes it all the more refreshing. (Aug.)