The Other Americans

Locations
Call Number: Adult Book / Fiction / General / Lalami, Laila, Fiction / Lalami, Laila
On Shelf At: Malletts Creek Branch, Traverwood Branch

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Malletts Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / General / Lalami, Laila	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Malletts Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / General / Lalami, Laila	4-week checkout	Due 05-24-2024
Traverwood Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / General / Lalami, Laila	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction / Lalami, Laila	4-week checkout	Due 05-08-2024
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction / Lalami, Laila	4-week checkout	Due 04-15-2024
Pittsfield Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / General / Lalami, Laila	4-week checkout	Due 05-24-2024
Westgate Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / General / Lalami, Laila	4-week checkout	Due 05-22-2024

"From the Pulitzer Prize finalist, author of The Moor's Account--a timely and powerful new novel about the suspicious death of a Moroccan immigrant that is at once a family saga, a murder mystery, and a love story, all of it informed by the treacherous fault lines of American culture. Nora Guerraoui, a jazz composer, returns home to a small town in the Mojave after hearing that her father, owner of a popular restaurant there, has been killed in a suspicious hit-and-run car accident. Told by multiple narrators--Nora herself, Jeremy (the Iraq war veteran with whom she develops an intimacy), widow Maryam, Efrain (an immigrant witness to the accident who refuses to get involved for fear of deportation), Coleman (the police investigator), and Driss (the dead man himself), The Other Americans deftly explores one family's secrets and hypocrisies even as it offers a portrait of Americans riven by race, class, and religion, living side by side, yet ignorant of the vicissitudes that each tribe, as it were, faces" -- Provided by publisher.

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COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Jeremy Hater submitted by GwenC on June 10, 2022, 3:44pm One huge issue I have with this book is that the main love interest is a cop. Now I wouldn't have a problem if there had been some well thought out social commentary about police brutality and how corrupt the history of the police is but there is none of that in this book. The ways in which the author attempts to touch on the issue of police violence throughout the novel is half-hearted at best. At one point, we see Jeremy commenting on how he had a bad day at work because his boss is hard on him for being late. But then Jeremy saves a baby and his boss isn't rude to him anymore because the baby distracts from the bad press they've been getting lately. But this issue is glossed over and not explicated. This book was published in 2019 in which 1,004 people had been shot and killed by the police, please give me a break with this half-baked narrative that really doesn't delve into anything interesting. Overall, this part of the book was sooo out of touch. If an author is going to have a main character be a member of the American police force, then that author better be ready to go more in depth with the characterization than Lalami did here.
Another reason why this book is not good can be attributed to the fact that Jeremy sexualizes Nora every chapter he gets. Nora barely ever describes him or his body, but every chance Jeremy gets he's commenting on some part of her and in a sexualizing manner as well. The ways in which he describes her are not romantic or sweet, it's really just odd and makes me like him even less than I already did in the first place!