What readers think of Someone Like Us, plus links to write your own review.

This beautifully written and masterfully crafted novel lets us in to the inner world of Mamush, a struggling international journalist who must leave his wife and ill toddler in Paris to return to DC for the holidays, only to learn that Samuel, the father figure of his life and a cab driver, has committed suicide. We learn of his irregular trip, which takes him first to Chicago where he was raised by his single mother and Samuel, both immigrants from Ethiopia.

While in Chicago for a day, Mamush, whom we learn was a quiet and accommodating child who could make himself seem invisible when needed, tries to fill in some of the many blank spaces in his childhood. He then is driven by a chain of cab drivers back across the country to DC, the last leg of the trip driven by Samuel. We jump back and forth between this journey and Mamush attending the Samuel's wake in his DC suburban home. We learn that Mamush has often had difficulty determining what is and isn't real, as we as readers try to understand what parts of the story may also not be real.

Like much of Mamush's communication with his parents, and even with his wife, a photographer whose photographs also appear in the book, the story is told "on the slant" and ends up working on several different levels. I found it all a very moving description of the disappointment so many immigrants must live with in this country, and the strange "in-between" world their children must inhabit.