Someone Like Us, Dinaw Mengestu

 

Someone Like Us by Dinaw Mengestu

Started: January 13, 2025
Completed: January 20, 2025
Recommendation: Recommended
Recommended By: I'm sure I read a review someplace, but I cannot remember where.

Review:

This is an oddly introspective book which is reminiscent of MC Escher's drawing of hands drawing hands:

There is also a playfulness with both tense and location.  This book is interesting in other ways as it looks at death from several different angles.  At one point, the narrator is told how to lie:  basically, use Steve Bannon's approach of "flooding the zone" with extraneous information so that it is difficult to tell what is the lie and what isn't and basically distracts the questioner from the question that was asked.  It was shocking to realize that this is what my own children did (I cannot count the number of times I pointed out that they had provided a lot of information without actually answering the question I had asked).  It must be a cultural thing that is common in many cultures, but seems to be lacking in American culture (or maybe it is simply lacking in my friend circle).