The Nobody People: Interesting concept, but not a page-turner

The Nobody People by Bob Proehl

Avi Hirsch is an investigative journalist whose specialty is reporting on bombings. He’s obsessed with bombs and the people who make them. This preoccupation has led to the loss of a leg, but that doesn’t slow Avi down too much.

Avi’s latest obsession is with a video recording of a church bomber. There’s a couple of things that seem strange about it. One is that Avi has seen this same guy on two videotaped bombings and he should have died in each. The other weird thing is that matter seems to act strangely when this bomber is present. It’s almost as if the guy can nullify matter.

As Avi is on the bomber’s trail, some people come to visit him and tell him they’ve caught the bomber. These odd folks are faculty members at a school for kids with supernatural abilities. They call themselves Resonants and they want Avi to visit the school and write a news article about it so that they can gently alert the world of their presence (which has so far been hidden). They also inform Avi that his own daughter Emmeline, who always seems to know about things before they happen, is a Resonant.

Bob Proehl

When Avi reports about the school and enrolls Emmeline there, it causes major stress on his professional and personal life, including his marriage. Some of the public reaction is quite negative, and Avi’s wife doesn’t appreciate that he took Emmeline there without discussing it with her first.

A large portion of the novel deals with the fallout of Avi’s decisions. We also get a good look at Owen, the bomber, and the events and personal interactions that led to his destructive behavior. Several other characters’ motivations, histories, and behaviors are also extensively detailed.

Bob Proehl seems more interested in exploring these characters than in providing us with a thrilling plot about people with supernatural abilities. I liked some of his characters well enough, but didn’t love any of them. Despite hearing so much about them, I didn’t feel that I really knew or cared for them. I think there were just too many of them. This, and the lack of a cohesive and compelling plot, made it easy to keep putting The Nobody People down — it’s not a page-turner.

Proehl uses his story to expose our tendency to fear and even hate those who are different from us. After the Resonants are outed by Avi, some fearful citizens begin to demand that they be dealt with, making suggestions that we’ve unfortunately seen in our own history of interacting with foreigners, immigrants, and people who are just different. (However, I don’t think that Proehl’s Resonants, many of whom have dangerous inhuman powers, can be thought of as analogous to immigrants and foreigners.)

The ending of The Nobody People was not satisfying. There’s a sequel, The Somebody People, expected in 2020. I’m not sure if I’ll read it. While I’d like to know where Proehl is going with this story, I have to admit that I didn’t really enjoy my time with The Nobody People.

Thérèse Plummer performs Random House Audio’s edition of The Nobody People. I’ve mentioned how amazing she is before and she’s just as awesome here. I have one complaint, though: There are several uncultured, bigoted, and/or hateful characters in this story and I didn’t appreciate that Plummer gave most (maybe all) of them Southern accents. That’s not cool.