The Other Americans By Laila Lalami

This is a mystery or a whodunnit, but it is also a slow reveal of family secrets and various prejudices that existed in a small town. Driss Guerraoui, a Moroccan immigrant living with his wife in California is killed by a hit and run driver. It turns out that the driver knew the victim as they had businesses near each other and had previous minor conflicts. The driver also claimed that he hit a coyote and did not believe he had killed anyone. As family relationships are revealed as well as early friendships, there is insight into many of these relationships that go beyond the tragic incident.

This reader never quite got into the story. Each chapter was interesting on its own, but never was a page turner for me. It may have been that there were long periods of time between reads for me. However, I cannot recommend this book.

The Other Americans by Laila Lalami

An old man who happens to be a Moroccan immigrant and the owner of a small restaurant is killed by a hit-and-run driver in a small California town. The impact on his friends, neighbors, police, a reluctant witness, and a few others is examined. Each person gets to speak multiple times as a chapter is devoted to the thinking of that subject at various times. Since many are immigrants, we get a sense of where they are coming from geographically and psychologically. We see familiar scenarios of parents’ expectations of children and young people trying to find their personal identities as well as exploring relationships. The reader is confronted with prejudice, pride, jealously, love, sexuality and a lot more human experiences.

The story is also a classic “whodunit” mystery. It reminded me of the many episodes I have seen of the popular TV program Dateline where a real mystery is detected and there is an attempt to show how the cast of characters is related and explained in some depth. Here is where the book failed for me. I got caught in wanting to figure out who the killer was, especially since there was an early suggestion that there was a motive and not an accident. Therefore, I became less interested in the in-depth analysis of each character and wanted to see the police solve the mystery. So in retrospect, I did not appreciate the potential value of this book, although it did hold my interest.(2020)