People Like Us: A Novel

by Jason Mott Narrated by Jason Mott, Ronald Peet, JD Jackson

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

In a story that first began as a memoir, acclaimed author Jason Mott brilliantly explores the nature of grief, fear, hope and joy through two beloved characters.

One of USA Today's 15 Books You Should Read This Summer
One of Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Hot New Summer Reads
One of People's Most Anticipated Summer Books
One of Lit Hub's Most Anticipated Books of 2025

The riveting new novel by the author of the 2021 National Book Award winner and bestseller Hell of a Book

People Like Us is Jason Mott's electric new novel. It is not memoir, yet it has deeply personal connections to Jason's life. And while rooted in reality, it explodes with dreamlike experiences that pull a reader in and don't let go, from the ability to time travel to sightings of sea monsters and peacocks, and feelings of love and memory so real they hurt.

In People Like Us, two Black writers are trying to find peace and belonging in a world that is riven with gun violence. One is on a global book tour after a big prize win; the other is set to give a speech at a school that has suffered a shooting. And as their two storylines merge, truths and antics abound in equal measure: characters drink booze out of an award trophy; menaces lurk in the shadows; tiny French cars putter around the countryside; handguns seem to hover in the air; and dreams endure against all odds.

People Like Us is wickedly funny and achingly sad all at once. It is an utter triumph bursting with larger-than-life characters who deliver a very real take on our world. This book contains characters experiencing deep loss and longing; it also is buoyed by riotous humor and characters who share the deepest love. It is the newest creation of a writer whose work amazes, delivering something utterly new yet instantly recognizable as a Jason Mott novel.

Finishing the novel will leave you absolutely breathless and, at the same time, utterly filled with joy for life, changed forever by characters who are people like us.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Praise for People Like Us:

“The follow-up to Mott’s National Book Award-winning Hell of a Book weaves the stories of two Black authors — one on an international book tour, the other confronting a deadly school shooting — into a comedic, surreal exploration of love and loss.” —New York Times

"Part memoir, part travelogue, part fever dream, Mott’s novel deploys wicked humor and pathos to explore issues around race, gun violence, fame and mental health.” —Atlanta Journal Constitution

“A meta-novel that stings and touches the reader.... The whole book seems the literary equivalent of a post-bop jazz performance, with oblique happenings that compel attention because of the book’s antic energy and lyrical passages.” —Kirkus (starred review)

"Mott’s writing is funny, intelligent, and sharp as a knife....This book is full of action, suspense, and laughs. Its reflections about being a Black American in Europe are insightful. Jump in for a full-force, visceral ride." —Library Journal (starred review)

“Picking up in a universe near the one represented in Mott’s last book, the award-winning Hell of A Book, People Like Us involves the same tonal gymnastics. Mott’s writing is electric. Sentences zing with the energy of darts. But all that riz ultimately serves to convey a lacerating critique of American gun violence. File this one under ‘genre-bending tour-de-force.’” —Lit Hub

"Mott follows up his 2021 National Book Award–winning novel Hell of a Book with a surreal and intimate story about two Black writers contending with loss, longing, and gun violence." —The Millions

“The novel’s mischievous humor gradually gives way to a frightening fever dream. Mott’s satire is thoroughly uncompromising, which makes it all the more refreshing.” –Publishers Weekly

"A dynamic text moving faster than the pages turn, this is a novel true to our time’s search for a path forward—one that even dares to dream of togetherness." –Booklist

“A book that begs for an immediate reread, People Like Us hits the soul hard. It is haunting, vivid literary fiction at its finest.” —BookPage (starred review)

Kirkus Reviews

★ 2025-05-29
Impudent humor, dark farce, and the looming threat of violence somehow merge in jittery tandem in this novel, along with a pair of storylines about Black writers on book tours—and in personal upheaval.

On the one hand, there’s Soot, a Black writer who is “the age of early evening bedtimes and early morning ibuprofen.” (In other words, 44 years old.) He’s visiting Minnesota in the dead of winter, away from home to promote his new book, and one senses from the start that it isn’t just the snowy, frigid air that’s making him shudder. On the other hand, there’s a younger, friskier National Book Award–winning Black writer, also on a literary tour, in the more temperate climes of southern Europe. Neither the latter’s age nor name are specified here. But he’s perfectly OK with people who mistake him for Ta-Nehisi Coates or Colson Whitehead or even Walter Mosley. (“Turns out I can be anybody you want me to be if I’m just willing to say the words.”) These mercurial men are the dual (if not dueling) protagonists in this latest from Mott, a follow-up of sorts to his 2021 National Book Award–winning novel,Hell of a Book, in which Soot appeared in younger form, growing up in North Carolina. Soot spends most of his narrative here bouncing back in time to when he was still happily married, and his daughter was still alive. Inferences of the tragic calamity that took Soot’s daughter’s life intrude on the public and private moments of his tour. Meanwhile, the other author is having a time of it overseas as he’s embraced by a rich and famous Frenchman who offers him lasting wealth if he never returns to the U.S. As this transaction plays out, the author meets an enigmatic young man named Dylan who hates it when the author calls him “Kid” (and who also seems a carryover from Mott’s previous book) along with an effusive Black giant who loves H.P. Lovecraft and speaks with a Scottish brogue. The younger author is also being marked for death by a madman named Remus—the latter development compelling the author to secure a firearm. Indeed, guns are the subtext that link both narratives, along with the trauma they instill in those who witness and survive their malign use. The whole book seems the literary equivalent of a post-bop jazz performance, with oblique happenings that compel attention because of the book’s antic energy and lyrical passages.

A meta-novel that stings and touches the reader.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940193442820
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	08/05/2025
Edition description:	Unabridged