Someone Like Us, by Dinaw Mengestu: The Many Ways Stories Examine Truth

Our Reader-in-Chief Barack Obama chose Someone Like Us, by Dinaw Mengestu as one his favorite reads of 2024. I'd read and was amazed by one of Mengestu's previous books, All Our Names, so this novel published in July had been on my radar. But Obama's endorsement bumped it to the top of the priority list, as I continue to catch up on 2024 novels I missed when they were published. 

This is a slim novel with a seemingly simple plot -- an American-Ethiopian journalist named Mamush is flying back to the US from Paris, where he now lives with his wife and special needs son, to visit his mother. Mamush's marriage is on the rocks for a number of reasons, but his drinking isn't helping. Neither does it help that Mamush misses his flight to Washington DC, and then for reasons he probably doesn't fully understand himself, gets on a flight to Chicago, instead. Chicago is the city of his childhood --  where he and his mother, and sometimes a mysterious fella named Samuel lived in a small apartment, trying to make ends meet. 

Who is Samuel? The backstory paints him as a sort of father-figure and mentor to Mamush, but he has a complicated past and even more complicated relationship to Mamush's mother. We find out on the first page of the novel that Samuel, an Ethiopian immigrant like Mamush's mother, who has made his life's work as a cabdriver, has died around the same time Mamush arrived in Chicago.

But who is Samuel, really? Why has he had such an outsized influence on Mamush's life, for better or worse? And how did Samuel die? These are the central questions of this novel.

Mengestu is a genius, pure and simple. Even with the relative simplicity of the story, this is a novel that doesn't allow you to get comfortable. You have to pay close attention and it takes a while to get your rhythm as a reader. The narrative constantly shifts to memories, past conversations, childhood scenes -- and then quickly moves back to the present. But there are two strands of real-time story, too. And then Mengestu has even more tricks up his sleeve as we hurdle to the ending, and, we hope, an answer to the novel's questions.

This is also a novel about storytelling -- how memories and stories overlap and mix and become an amalgam of several different interpretations of events. Sometimes stories are idealized to hide truth. Sometimes stories are exaggerated to emphasize truth. Sometimes stories are a tool for excavating a truth that is too difficult to arrive at head on.  

I know this will put some readers off this book, but it truly is a novel that requires some thought, concentration, and undivided attention. It's not a difficult read, but Mengestu is subtle. He's not slapping you in the face with what he's trying to do here. There were times I didn't give it the mental space it deserved and those times I was just looking forward to finishing it. I wish now I would've highlighted some of the beautiful and profound passages in this novel. Because they are what drew back in -- there would be a sentence or scene or a quote that would stop me in my tracks, and I'd be like "Dammit, I really should've put more into this book." It's also probably a novel that requires a second reading. But it's an ideal book club book, and I enjoyed the time I spent with it. 

Fancy Hats and a 70-Year Marriage: A Conversation with Jonathan Evison

There is very little I enjoy more than talking with writers about their books. That's especially true when the writer I get to talk to is one I've been a HUGE fan of for a long time. 

Jonathan Evison's new novel, The Heart of Winter, is out this week, and it might be his best one yet. It's the sweet, heartwarming story of a 70-year marriage. 

I recently got to talk to him for a piece for the Chicago Review of Books. Please head over to CHIRB to read the interview, in which he talks about the inspiration for the novel, flawed but redemptive characters, and how important caretakers are both in sickness and in health. 

The photo below is from Book Expo America 2012, the first time I got to meet him. He signed my ARC of The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving, which naturally I still have and enjoys a prominent spot on my bookshelf. 

On Art and Obsession...and Publishing: A Conversation with Writer Jane Hartsock

Load Bearing, a new novel by Jane Hartsock, is a really fun literary success story. That's true both because it's REALLY good and also because had Hartsock waited out the glacial pace of the traditional publishing machine, her beautiful book may never have made it to readers. Instead, she decided to self publish her book -- and before you scoff and turn up your nose, I can honestly tell you this novel is better written and more engaging than many of the traditionally published novels you'll read. 

Load Bearing is a thrilling literary mystery about a young woman named Hannah. Hannah is married to an older mansplainer workaholic named Michael. A job transfer requires the two to move with their young daughter from the east coast to Indianapolis, where they buy a fixer-upper/money pit home. Hannah dives into the renovation and soon becomes obsessed with the architect of the old house who killed himself a century earlier. What led this architect to his untimely demise?  What secrets can this old house reveal about the architect's life and his family? And how might those secrets and the architect's life ripple through the year's to inform Hannah's present moment? (Indeed, why is he appearing to her in sexy dreams?)  

The novel is about how it's just as easy to become obsessed with artist as it is art. Does an artist's biographical details ALWAYS hold clues to the mysteries within their art? Or should art always be separated from artist?

Load Bearing is not a book that had even remotely been on my radar until a friend recommended it. He actually sent it to me, and frankly, 99 out of 100 times, it would've sat on my shelf for a very long time, maybe forever. But I took a chance on it, and I LOVED it. I was so impressed with it, in fact, I wanted to find out more about this novel's path to publication as a self published book  So, I decided to ask if Hartsock might be interested in doing a short interview about her novel. We connected on Bluesky and she was gracious enough to answer a few questions via email. If you've ever wondered about the line between traditional and self publishing, or if you're looking for some top-shelf advice on writing, please read on! 

Greg Zimmerman: Our mutual friend who recommended your book mentioned that, for a variety of reasons, you decided to self publish this novel. Please tell us about this book’s path to publication.

Jane Hartsock: Hard to know where to start with this question. Maybe chronologically is the best path. I wrote a campus novel before Load Bearing that I let two very close (and very kind) friends read. I think a lot of writers have a first novel like that, that never sees the light of day, and the whole point is just to figure out whether they can write a novel. Anyway, that makes Load Bearing technically my second novel, but I approached it differently. 

I joined two writing groups and the Indiana Writers Center, attended the Midwest Writers Workshop conference, started reading about the publishing process, started reading about the craft of writing (my favorite craft books are Carol Bly’s The Passionate, Accurate Story and Chuck Palahniuk’s Consider This—both gifts from my mom), and wrote Load Bearing. My biggest concern with Load Bearing as I thought seriously about publishing it was whether I would embarrass myself, whether I wouldn’t know that it was actually bad. I decided to use the query process to help me figure that out. And my original thought was that if it didn’t get published by a traditional publisher, then that meant it probably wasn’t very good, and I would just think, Okay, I got that out of my system, but I have other talents and should move on. 

Then I entered the query trenches, and that process was nothing like what I’d imagined. I got a ton of rejections, of course, but I also got several requests for the full manuscript — generally a good sign. The feedback consistently was that the writing was very good (which had been my primary worry — that I was overestimating my writing ability) but that the book “wasn’t a good fit” for the agent’s list, which, as you know, is a euphemism for “I won’t be able to sell this to a publisher.” During that time, I had one agent who suggested the book would be better with alternating “interwoven” timelines —something like Unsheltered by Kingsolver, I suppose. I had another agent who specialized in Midwestern authors and had requested the full manuscript, but her partner died, and she shut down her shop before she could give me feedback. I then had an independent publisher that looked like it was very interested in the manuscript, but was moving at a snail’s pace through the last round of consideration… 

And then… [and I’m sorry to be melodramatic about all this] I had an abnormal mammogram, then an abnormal biopsy, an abnormal MRI, a recommendation for a bilateral mastectomy, and ultimately a diagnosis of ductal carcinoma in situ. By that point, I’d done enough reading about the publishing world to know that there was a lot stacked against me in getting Load Bearing published. As a 46-year-old woman, living in Indiana, writing a book set in Indiana, that engages the history of Indiana, and is in the women’s fiction/historical fiction genres, that book would have to be damn near Pulitzer Prize-worthy to get a traditional publisher. And it’s not. It’s good. I’m proud of it. It’s better than a lot of stuff that is traditionally published, but I understand the game. So, I just said "fuck it" and decided to publish it myself. My goal was to get it published prior to my mastectomy in May 2024. And I did. And I regret nothing! (That’s not entirely true; see below.)

Greg Zimmerman: What have been the biggest challenges and what have you learned along the way?

Jane Hartsock: The primary challenges have been financial and pragmatic. 

It costs a lot of money to self-publish a novel. My biggest expenses were a developmental editor and numerous beta readers. Both costs were indispensable and absolutely worth it, but I have lots of thoughts about the way traditional publishing favors a very narrow kind of story (coastal, young MC, voicey, plot-driven), and self-publishing favors a very narrow kind of author (namely one with the time and money to spend on writing and publishing a novel). This is probably not good for readers, who are incredibly diverse in their tastes at a time when there’s not much diversity in traditional publishing and finding what you like among self-published authors can be a bit like finding a needle in a haystack.

Anyway, from a pragmatic perspective, I didn’t really know what I was doing, so to keep things easy, I used the Amazon publishing package—free formatting, free ISBN, upload to Amazon, done and done. 

For all future novels, I will use a formatting software (I prefer Vellum), buy the ISBNs separately, and upload to multiple publishing outlets (Ingram, Amazon, and Smashwords, chiefly). The developmental editors and betas stay, though. They’re so incredibly valuable.

A secondary challenge is marketing. I don’t have the reach I would have with traditional publishing, and I hate (HATE) marketing my own book. It is so, as the kids say, cringe. It is, far and away, my least favorite part of being self-published, and I am terrible at it. 

On the upside, there’s a lot about self-publishing that is pretty liberating, from my rampant use of the f-word, to my inflexibility on the Oxford comma, I can do what I want. And the book is mine. For better or for worse. Every word, every decision is mine. And I love that. So, it’s a balance.

Greg Zimmerman: For writers in different fields who KNOW they have a story to tell, what’s your best advice to get started, to keep writing, and tell their stories?

Jane Hartsock: A lot of the cliché advice already out there turns out to be really true. Words on the page—just put words on the page. You can’t edit a blank page. 

Write the kind of book you want to read. Don’t chase the publishing trends because they change faster than you can write. Or faster than I can, anyway. Just write your book. 

Get a good writing group and go even if you don’t have something to submit—critiquing others makes you a better writer. 

Treat it seriously. Set time aside every day to write. For me, I write from ~9-10 p.m. every night and in chunks on the weekend.

Read a ton, not only in the genre you’re writing in, but at least in that.  

Figure out what works for you and then do it over and over again. I don’t write from an outline—I make notes about “episodes” in a word doc and write toward those. So, something as short as “Hannah finds Decker photos in attic.” They’re basically just ideas. I also edit as I’m writing. So I write till I get stuck, then go back to the beginning of the work in progress (WIP) and start editing until I’m unstuck. I make playlists to go with my WIPs that I listen to in the car and that help me think about the book I’m working on. I jot notes in my phone. Some of what I do is verboten (I do so love my adverbs). Some is pretty standard. Find what works for you. The most important thing is, obviously, just keep writing. 

I will also say that I think there are stages to writing the way there are stages to grief. There’s that initial compulsion—that “I’m gonna…” This, for me, was followed by just a crashing wave of insecurity—"I think I might be really bad at this; I might also be a little bit crazy.” Then you kind of get over that and are like, “Welp. I might as well finish this dumpster fire.” And then you finally reach a point of acceptance. For me, it was a realization that I am not an astonishingly good writer. But I’m good enough, and I like doing it. So, I’m going to keep doing it. Now, when I hit those stages, I know them. So it’s like, “Oh! This is the I-might-be-crazy stage. I’m not. Just keep going.”

Greg Zimmerman: I can’t wait to read what you do next! No pressure or anything but what’s next for you? 

Jane Hartsock: I’m working on a “beach read” that I hope to publish in March. It’s set in Chicago where I lived for about twelve years. It’s supposed to be just a fun, enjoyable book for my friends to read on Spring Break—though I won’t be mad if others want to read it, too. That book is in its final round of revisions, and I’m pretty sure I’ll hit my deadline. 

My colleague Colin Halverson and I just finished a biography of the first person to complete an English translation of the Ebers Papyrus. We’ve started querying that, and it’s out with several agents at the moment. 

I’ve got an extremely rough draft of a prequel to Load Bearing that is the story of Andrew and Eleanor Decker’s marriage. That one is giving me a lot of trouble, and I’ve set it aside. 

My newest WIP is set in Indianapolis again—mystery/psychological suspense. I’ve been using it to procrastinate on the Decker prequel.

And I’ve gotten several requests for a Load Bearing prequel that concerns just Hannah, so I’m giving that some thought.

Intermezzo, by Sally Rooney: Conventionality is for Suckers

Early in Sally Rooney's new novel, Intermezzo, a character who at that point, we're not sure whether we like or not, has the following thought: "Plain, unappealing people are by no means exempt from the experience of strong passion." That seemed unnecessarily mean -- like, obvious to the point that it goes without saying. Which made me immediately think, "Wow, I'm really going to hate this book. But bad books are by no means exempt from strong passions about them." 😜

So it was with no small degree of trepidation that I continued on with my third foray into the Rooneyverse. Having really liked Normal People and intensely disliked Beautiful World, Where Are You, this novel would be my personal Sally Rooney tiebreaker. I'd put it off for quite a while, but when the end of the year best-of lists started coming out, and everyone from Barack Obama to Rebecca Schinksy at Book Riot (as an Honorable Mention) included it on their lists, I decided to give it a go. 

The verdict?  

Good Rooney 2, Bad Rooney 1. I loved this! I can't believe I just typed that, but I'm doing so with a clear conscience. Intermezzo is really, really good. It's wise, it's exceedingly well-written, and it's just downright entertaining.

The story is about two Irish brothers, Ivan 22, a chess player, and Peter, 32, a successful lawyer. Both are mourning the recent death of their father. Both become involved in exceedingly complicated love connections, and these relationships also complicate the already complicated relationship with each other. Yes, if you like a whole bunch of friction, tension, and conflict (and complication!), this is the novel for you. It's no accident, I'm sure, the characters have "Russian" names, including a dog named Alexei -- this has all the existential crisis vibes of the Russian masters.

Intermezzo is successful, I think, because of how Rooney deals with the notion of convention. In this novel, conventionality is in the eye of the beholder, and the point is that no one should care what the beholder thinks. Ivan is dating a 36-year-old woman who is separated but not divorced from her alcoholic husband and Peter is dating a much younger woman, in addition to still carrying the torch for an ex-girlfriend who had a horrific accident. These relationships shouldn't work, notably because everyone in proximity to them looks down their noses at them. But will they work? Why will they work or not? That's why we continue to read, to see how Rooney continues to juggle all this juicy conflict. 

Rooney is often judged harshly because of her popularity -- if it's popular, it can't be good, some say. But this is, actually. Really, really good. 

New Dork Review's Most Anticipated Books of 2025

Last week, we looked back on the bookish year that was. This week, let's look ahead. Here are 13 books I can't wait to read in 2025. 

Before we get to the list, let's quickly talk about preorders (sorry if you've heard this soapbox speech from me before), because we all have a vested interest in writers and books being successful. Preorders are absolutely crucial for the success of a book. A robust preorder number tells the publisher there's a lot of interest in and buzz around a book, and is therefore worthy of marketing dollars. So if any of these books strike your fancy, smash that link and preorder. (All the links below are affiliate links for Bookshop.org, so using those links to order not only supports indie bookstores, but also me!)  

The Heart of Winter, by Jonathan Evison (January 7) -- I've already read this book and I can faithfully report that it's freakin' AMAZING. You already know I'm a huge Evison fan, and this may actually be his best novel yet.

Good Dirt, by Charmaine Wilkerson (January 28) -- The author of Black Cake returns with another "multi-generational epic" about family secrets, past trauma, and seemingly much more. I loved Black Cake an

The Forty-Year Kiss, by Nickolas Butler (February 4) -- Between Evison's book and this one, friends, we're living in a golden age of geriatric romance novels. (That was a sentence so preposterously funny for me to write, I need to take 5 minutes now to compose myself.....Okay. There we go. Back to the post.) Butler's new novel tells the story of a rekindled romance 40 years after the first spark. Butler is one of my all-time favorite writers, and I'll follow him anywhere.

The Dream Hotel, Laila Lalami (March 4) -- Do you want to hear my Laila Lalami story? As usual, it involves me being awkward around brilliant writers. So I was supposed to introduce her before a class she was teaching for StoryStudio. I practiced her name all day, and of course then, when the time came, I said something like, "and with that, I'll turn it over to our instructor, Laila Lamamamalani." She was very nice about it. I'm an idiot. And the world spins on. Anyway...Lalami's follow up to her AMAZING novel The Other Americans is a dystopian story in a future America where dreams are under surveillance. 

Dream Count, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (March 4) -- I learned about this book while I was in a coffee shop and gasped so loudly, I drew concerned glances from people me around me. It's been 10 years since Adichie's last novel Americanah, which is one of my favorite books ever. This is, for my money, THE publishing event of 2025.

Theft, by Abdulrazak Gurnah (March 18) -- When a living Nobel Laureate publishes something new, you read it. This is Gurnah's first novel since he was awarded the Nobel for Literature in 2021.

The Savage Noble Death of Babs Dionne, by Ron Currie (March 25) -- Speaking of writers I love, but who haven't published in a minute, Currie returns with his first novel since 2018's The One-Eyed Man. Currie is also the author Everything Matters! and Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles, both of which are tremendous. 

Dear Writer: Pep Talks & Practical Advice for the Creative Life, by Maggie Smith (April 1) -- Poet, novelist, memoirist, and essayist (she's just a really good writer!) Maggie Smith will publish a craft book in 2025, and if you're a writer who has read your Bird by Bird and On Writing and looking for something new, this is it. 

Rabbit Moon, by Jennifer Haigh (April 8) -- The author of the criminally underrated novels, Mercy Street, Faith, and Heat and Light (among several others) is now a must-read writer for me whenever she publishes. Her new novel is a psychological thriller about a family dealing with an accident in Shanghai. Yes, please! 

Home of the American Circus, by Allison Larkin (May 6) -- Not gonna lie, I've handsold Larkin's last novel The People We Keep approximately 304 times to customers who come into the bookstore and "just want something good to read." Having now read some of Larkin's backlist, too, I can confirm that that novel was not a one-hit wonder. She's an amazingly astute writer, and I can't wait for this new one!  

Mark Twain, by Ron Chernow (May 13) -- Are we really going to read a 1,200-page biography of Twain written by the Hamilton guy? Strong maybe. I'm definitely not ruling it out.  

Flashlight, by Susan Choi (June 3) -- This is Choi's first novel since her National Book Award-winning story of arts school kids, Trust Exercise. I got meet Choi in September, and she's so lovely, and she had plenty of inside info about this literary thriller centers on the disappearance of a father.

So Far Gone, by Jess Walter (June 10) -- So in 2025, we'll have new novels from Jonathan Evison, Nickolas Butler, Ron Currie, and now Jess Walter?! It's an absolute banner year for Middle-Aged White Writers Beloved by Greg Zimmerman. Can someone get Jonathan Tropper on the horn?

(If you're wondering why there are 13 books on this list, but only 12 covers, it's because So Far Gone doesn't have an officially revealed cover yet. Now you can sleep tonight.)