People Like Them
by Samira Sedira
Translated by Lara Vergnaud
In an author’s note at the end of her book, Samira Sedira tells us that People Like Them (originally published in French as Des Gens comme Eux) is inspired by an event of “true crime” – a homicide committed in 2003 in a village in France’s Haute-Savoie region, in which a man killed a family of five. Sedira observes that a point which the media had not picked up was that the father of the massacred family was black and that the murder was committed in an area totally unused to so-called “foreigners” – even those born and bred in France. Sedira’s novel is an exploration of the factors which may have led to the murder, including the explosive mix of casual racism and class discontent. To this end, she weaves elements from the real-life murder into a fictional account narrated by the murderer’s wife Anna Guillot.
At under 200 pages, People Like Them is a quick read, but it is hard-hitting and thought-provoking even while delivering the excitement of a thriller (credit for this also goes to Lara Vergnaud, whose translation feels entirely fluid and authentic) . The novel is particularly effective because, being told from the perspective of Anna, it presents a nuanced portrait of Anna’s husband Constant Guillot. The narrative does not try to whitewash the victims, especially the charismatic but scheming Bakary and his wife Sylvia who is portrayed as a classist snob. Indeed, at some points we’re drawn into sympathizing with Constant. And that’s precisely where the genius of the novel lies. I am a middle-aged white reader who thinks of himself as open and tolerant, but these moments of sympathy with Constant and his lot immediately raised an uncomfortable and guilty reflection. Was I rooting for a mass murderer? Am I tainted by unconscious racism? Worse still, could I have ever acted like Constant were I placed in his position?
Sedira herself spells out this point in her
conclusion: Criminals – even murderers – serve as mirror images; they
reflect our own fallibility. Viewing them as monstrous aberrations prevents us
from understanding human nature. There’s no such thing as monsters. Only
humans.
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