This was a random pick from the New Books shelf of the Beaverbrook library while looking for something else.The author, born in Morocco, came to the U.S. on a student visa and was allowed to stay to become a citizen, now living in California. The central character seems to share many features of her life story, enduring racial profiling and discrimination along with a variety of other characters who are either immigrants or belong to minority groups. The theme of this injustice is carefully explored, although none of The Other Americans are portrayed as faultless and they all have deep character flaws. The strained life of people from diverse backgrounds trying to get ahead in small town California is entertaining and realistic.
Another musician with synesthesia, shows up, here overtly labelled as such, seeing music as shades and shapes. Both of the novels I read this week feature characters with this sensory phenomenon. Is it more common in artistic types, or only in novels about them? And is it an affliction or a talent to hear colours, see sounds, or taste coldness?
This is another novel that could benefit from a reference list of main characters for those of us whose old brains can’t keep them straight. Although all the short chapters are headed and narrated by a named character, the unstated times and places shift back and forth from Morocco to various points in southern California and from the 1980s to recent times, which still made it confusing to me, particularly in the first half. The hit and run victim killed in the first chapter shows up to narrate several later chapters. There is a late unpredictable plot twist that partially clarifies some of the earlier confusion, but this is not a whodunit mystery story.
For future readers, I composed a partial list of characters as a reference.
Nora, single daughter of Maryam and Mohammed Driss Geraoui, musician
Jeremy Gorecki, ex-marine, cop in Joshua Tree,California.
Driss and Maryam Geraoui, immigrant Californian restauranteurs, from Casablanca.
Efrain Aceves, Mexican immigrant.
Coleman, black female detective in the police department of Joshua Tree, from D.C.
Anderson Baker, Mojave, Vietnam war veteran, bowling alley owner in Yucca, California.
A.J., Anderson Baker’s son.
Salma, Nora’s married sister, dentist in San Bernardino.
Bryan Fierro, wounded ex-Marine, Walmart employee.
I recognized Lalani’s name from her essay The Unfulfilled Promise of American Citizenship, exploring the same theme, in the April 2020 Harpers which I read just after finishing this book. Her latest novel Conditional Citizens, isto be published next month, by Pantheon. Although The Other Americans was a very good read, I am not sure I would enjoy more on the same theme, even though she is a very talented and imaginative writer.
The Passionate Reader 