In Other People aren’t just like us, Julie, a paraplegic young woman, observes the world from her wheelchair. Her atypical condition offers her a singular point of view compared to the rest of humanity, and, therefore, a unique gaze that she employs like a kind of modern-day moralist with a caustic sense of humor.

Told in Julie’s voice, the narrative alternates chapters in which she unspools her offbeat ideas about human behavior with portraits of characters who illustrate those ideas. Anissa, Félix, Pétronille & Barnabé, Ousmane, Valère and others lend their names to the chapters. Julie tells their funny, surprising, touching or worrisome stories that are full of humanity, and therefore, of ill-will

Stuck in her wheelchair, but with a mind that flits lightly wherever it pleases, Julie is a storyteller who’s at home in all genres (theatrical monologue for Mado, detective fiction for Gaspard, news brief for Jean-Yves, etc.) and all kinds of humor (from burlesque to dark, from witty to absurd) all for the sake of the pleasure of both writing and reading.

As is often the case, fans of J.M. Erre’s novels will recognize characters they have come across in other books. But it’s worth specifying that knowing those characters ahead of time is absolutely not necessary to the enjoyment of this new book.

A brief treatise on contemporary mores, Other People aren’t just like us intertwines amused wisdom and caustic humor.