People Like Them

June 7, 2021
Inspired by a 2003 mass homicide in Haute-Savoie, French author Sedira’s too-slight English-language debut opens with the trial of Constant Guillot, a white working-class man from Carmac. Constant is charged with murdering his wealthy, sophisticated new neighbors—Bakary Langlois, a Gabon-born Black man raised in Paris; Bakary’s white wife, Sylvia; and the couple’s three mixed-race children, all between the ages of seven and 12. There’s no doubt of Constant’s guilt, as he confessed in gory detail. The only open question is what incited the atrocity—a mystery that narrator Anna, Constant’s partner and the mother of his three- and six-year-old daughters, reflects upon while the court case progresses. Though Sedira paints a colorful portrait of life in a provincial French village, she offers only a cursory examination of Constant’s possible motives, rendering the tale more character sketch than fully fledged novel. Key events unfold either via flashback or prosecutorial monologue, sapping them of immediacy and impact. Crime fiction fans will be left wanting. Agent: Marleen Seegers, 2 Seas Literary.

June 1, 2021
Newcomers Bakary and Sylvia Langlois and their children are conspicuous additions to the small French town of Carmac, where all the residents know each other. Bakary's Blackness, along with the family's wealth and mixed-race status, sets them apart from their neighbors. Their arrival and the envy they arouse elicit racist actions and words from townspeople who nevertheless deny being racist. Constant and Anna, a local couple, initially befriend the Langloises, although this relationship sours as resentment grows. Constant, fueled by the anguish of his thwarted dreams, anger over business dealings, and a disbelief that a Black man can enjoy more success than he, enacts a brutal rampage. Anna, who serves as the novel's narrator during both the present-day trial and the earlier events that led up to it, is left to try to make sense of it all. Based on a true story, French Algerian writer Sedira's gripping tale, her first to be translated into Engilsh, depicts how the realities of race, class, and socioeconomic status tragically supersede the national ideals of liberty, equality, and brotherhood in an insular French community.

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Starred review from June 1, 2021
A horrific real-life quintuple murder in a sleepy French village inspired this novel. What would it take to provoke extreme savagery in a seemingly normal person? This is the question Anna Guillot explores after her husband, Constant, kills five members of the Langlois family--Bakary, Sylvia, and their three children--in a fit of extreme rage. For a long time, the residents of the placid French village of Carmac haven't felt any real threats. They watched the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris at a remove, through televised media coverage. All that changes when Bakary Langlois arrives with his family. Not only is Bakary Black, he is also rich, a markedly different social class than most other Carmac residents. His custom-built chalet is a source of envy, especially for Constant, his neighbor. Anna narrates two stories: One looks back at her husband's early days as a promising pole vaulter whose athletic dreams are crushed by a nasty accident while the other details the systematic resentment that builds in an already fractured Constant, whose perceived indignities are compounded when Anna finds work as a maid at the Langlois chalet. Then the cauldron of simmering resentment boils over when Bakary swindles Constant out of his parents' life savings: 8,000 euros. In her first novel to be translated into English, Sedira packs a powerful punch, exploring the class-race divide through Constant, Anna, and the rest of the town's residents. The graphic murders stand in stark contrast to Sedira's subtle accounting of Constant's tortured path. At the center of the tragedy is complicity: Constant is never made to realize that a bad hand might be crippling but not reason enough to take it out on the perceived "other." Deeply unsettling yet compulsively readable.

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