People Like us

Short synopsis

Osnat and Dror, a couple in their forties, parents to two daughters, move in the summer to their dream house: It is private, spacious and decorated precisely to their taste. In fact, they made the deal of their lives: although the neighborhood is rundown, it will not remain this way forever — after all, the location is excellent. Within ten, fifteen years at the most, everyone will want to live here.

Except that the reception is frosty: an argument with a neighbor from a nearby house signals the beginning of a hostile relationship; a series of acts of vandalism reminds them over and over again of the rundown state of the neighborhood and its inhabitants; and new relationships appear to dangle midair: so it is with the hospitable neighbors in the next street, who raise large dogs, a lot of large dogs, for an inexplicable purpose; so it is with friends who recommended the neighborhood to them, and who perhaps failed to reveal the whole picture; and so it is with their eldest daughter, who continues to back off into the world of eleven-year-olds, shirking all attempts to shelter her.

For the first time in their lives, Osnat and Dror have difficulty deciphering the world around them: uncertainty hammers at their windows, insisting on penetrating the interior of the house; and eventually colors even that which has been taken for granted.

People Like Us is an original and daring novel that delicately and scrupulously sketches the banality that constitutes relationships and the vanquished terror that surges at its base. The result is a thrilling and sophisticated novel that brings Noa Yedlin’s talents to new heights.

Selected Reviews

“People Like Us is a complicated and sophisticated novel, whose narrative structure is reminiscent of westerns: new settlers, white, ‘enlightened’ and ‘ethical’ are attacked by the ‘wild’ and ‘violent’ locals, but ultimately they hold their own. The novel’s title, People Like Us, echoes the belief of a chosen elite in its supremacy and distinction. This is a belief that Yedlin shatters. The Ashkenazi-secular-liberal community stands trial in this new book, in which the masks are ripped off smug and satiated faces… One must be astonished at Yedlin’s daring and courage… thoughts on the novel stayed with me, after reading, through the night, and this is its virtue — to disturb.”

"The language of the novel is razor-sharp, and the dialogues in particular are full of irony and the grotesque (...) Noa Yedlin looks deep into the heads of the upper middle class in Israel, which could be found in the same way in any big German city. Each of the five main characters is precisely fleshed out, with all their abysses and contradictions. Noa Yedlin gleefully tears down all the bourgeois facades, indeed, one can literally hear the self-images splintering - a novel somewhere between a fit of laughter and goosebumps."

“Top-notch”

“Yedlin knows how to snipe precisely at the soft belly of the satiated bourgeoisie… Brilliant, funny and a little scary — a psychological thriller that is local, contemporary and super-intelligent. Rush off to buy it.”

“There are not many writers who know how to read the zeitgeist and to write it at the same time. Houellebecq did it, Franzen excels at it. We have Noa Yedlin, who astonishes us time after time by penetrating the process as it unfolds, by speaking to us with words we looked for but could not find. In this she outdoes everyone.”

“Noa Yedlin writes life accurately and honestly. An excellent book.”

"Refined, even brilliantly highly ironic."

"Macabre and subliminally humorous."

"Best entertainment, sharp-witted and biting!"

"Astute, absurd and funny."

"Noa Yedlin has mastered the great art of storytelling."

"A light-footed exploration of the pitfalls of age and the errors of youth."

"The craziest problems, the most macabre situations, a never-ending ingenuity."

“A wonderful book by a smart and gifted writer, top-tier psychologist, who sees everything and knows how to write about it.”