Kelly in People Like Us: Character Analysis

Overview: The Woman Who Swaddles the Dead and Outruns the Bullets

Kelly enters People Like Us as a memory and re-enters as a presence. She is the woman the narrator met on a San Francisco book tour years before the novel's present action, shared a single kiss goodbye with, and then failed to answer when she texted, “Are you okay?” Four years later, she reappears in a hospital elevator in Pordenone, Italy, and becomes one of the most important figures in the narrator's late-life attempt to find belonging. She works as an undertaker, a profession that gives her an unflinching relationship with death and violence. The narrator describes her in near-mythic terms—she was “the spring sun and the summer rain”—and admits she makes him feel small, “small and floating, like I'm dancing a waltz at the foot of a glacier.” She is one of the few characters who sees the narrator without his performances of authorship, and their relationship becomes a sustained thread of the novel's final sections.

Plot Role: From a Kiss to a Second Chance

Kelly's first appearance is retrospective. The narrator recalls meeting her at Wormfud Funeral Home in San Francisco during a book tour, where the two shared only a single kiss goodbye. He admits he let the connection lapse, failing to reply to her text asking if he was okay—a detail that quietly indicts him, since he wasn't okay at the time.

Four years later, she re-enters the story in a deliberately absurd scene. The narrator, recovering from a stabbing at Frenchie Memorial hospital, holds an elevator door for a naked woman fleeing an angry pursuer wielding a medical instrument. He recognizes her as Kelly. She reveals she now lives in Italy, working as an undertaker, and that she moved because young people back home kept dying from bullet wounds. She joins him and his companions on the drive to Paris, and their relationship becomes a central thread of the novel's later sections.

Motivations and Traits Shown Through Actions

Kelly's defining motivation is escape from gun violence. She tells the narrator she left the United States because the young people she prepared for burial kept dying from bullet holes: “They kept getting younger… Bullet holes. Just bullet holes. One day I decided to try and outrun the bullets. So here I am.” This is explicit in the text. Her profession as an undertaker is not incidental—it is the lens through which she experiences the world's violence, and it explains both her empathy and her pragmatism.

She is also strikingly direct. When she realizes the narrator is speaking his thoughts aloud, she tells him so without embarrassment. When she asks whether she makes him feel small, she does so with a smile, as if she already knows the answer. She tells him about the married doctor she was involved with in the same matter-of-fact tone she uses to discuss death. This directness is shown through action: she does not hedge or perform.

Her comfort with guns is notable. In Italy, she takes the narrator's pistol, unloads it, and fires two shots at a hillside, explaining, “I grew up with guns.” This is explicit. The irony—an undertaker who fled gun violence handling a firearm with ease—is an interpretation the text invites but does not state. She also spots the narrator's concealed gun in Chapter 17 because her ex-husband carried one, a detail that suggests a history with firearms that predates her escape.

Chronological Arc

Kelly's arc spans four years and two continents:

San Francisco (four years before the main action): She meets the narrator at Wormfud Funeral Home during his book tour. They share a single kiss goodbye. The narrator fails to reply to her text asking if he's okay, and the connection lapses.
Pordenone, Italy (present): She reappears in a hospital elevator, fleeing the wife of a doctor she was involved with. The narrator recognizes her. They walk through Pordenone, where she reveals her move to Italy and her work as an undertaker. She demonstrates that she can hear his thoughts because he is speaking them aloud. She agrees to join him in Paris.
The drive to Paris: She rides shotgun, fires the narrator's gun at a hillside, and helps the group navigate the aftermath of Dylan's distress at the gunshots.
Frenchie's Paris mansion: After Dylan collapses, Kelly and the narrator begin a relationship. She takes turns at Dylan's bedside, keeping him updated on the news while editing out the shootings and protests. She explains Dylan's backstory to the narrator. She studies Egypt and the dead in the library.
The shooting: When Remus arrives and the gun discharges, striking Dylan, Kelly holds Dylan while The Goon calls for paramedics.

Relationships

With the narrator: Kelly is the narrator's most intimate relationship in the novel's later sections. The narrator says she can hear his thoughts, which means “I've got nothing left to hide from her and nothing left to reveal.” She knows him “from the inside out” and stays anyway. This is explicit in the text. The narrator also admits she makes him feel small—not in a diminishing way, but in a way that humbles him. Their relationship begins only after he stops performing for her.

With Dylan: Kelly is one of the three people who take turns at Dylan's bedside during his long unconsciousness. She tells the narrator Dylan's backstory: he ran away from his family near DC as a child and came to work for Frenchie. She describes him as “just a kid who needs help,” a simple and compassionate reading of his trauma.

With The Goon: They share a moment of camaraderie when firing the gun in Italy, and she laughs with him when he bear-hugs her. Their relationship is easy and uncomplicated.

Key Decisions and Consequences

Decision: Leaving the United States. Kelly's move to Italy is a direct response to the gun violence she witnessed in her work. The consequence is that she escapes the daily exposure to young victims, though the novel suggests the violence follows her in other ways—she still works with the dead, and she still encounters the narrator, who carries a gun.

Decision: Joining the narrator in Paris. She has time off and chooses to travel with him. This decision leads to their relationship at Frenchie's mansion, and ultimately to her presence when Dylan is shot.

Decision: Firing the gun in Italy. She takes the narrator's pistol and fires it at a hillside, demonstrating her comfort with firearms. The consequence is that Dylan, already distressed, curls into a ball in the back seat—a moment that foreshadows his later collapse.

Decision: Staying at Frenchie's estate. The group collectively decides to remain, and Kelly is part of that decision. The narrator reflects on how “people drift into staying places,” and Kelly's presence is part of what makes the estate feel like home.

Theme and Symbol Connections

Kelly connects to several of the novel's central themes. Her profession as an undertaker places her at the intersection of death and grief, linking her to the novel's exploration of grief and the impossibility of changing the past. She tells the narrator she treated young victims “for all the sunrises they wouldn't get,” a line that echoes the novel's preoccupation with lost futures.

Her decision to leave America because of gun violence is a rejection of the idea that success or location can make one safe, connecting her to the theme of racial identity and the illusion of safety through success. Her matter-of-fact relationship with guns—she grew up with them, her ex-husband carried one, she fires one comfortably—is a direct illustration of the normalization of gun violence.

Kelly finds a kind of home in Italy, and later at Frenchie's estate, mirroring the narrator's own arc in the search for home and belonging. And she is one of the few characters who sees through the narrator's performances—she knows he is not Ta-Nehisi Coates or Colson Whitehead—which ties her to the theme of storytelling as survival. Her ability to hear his thoughts is a metaphor for the kind of intimacy that storytelling promises but rarely delivers.

Questions and Answers

1. Why did Kelly move to Italy?

Kelly moved to Italy because the young people she prepared for burial in the United States kept dying from bullet wounds. She tells the narrator, “They kept getting younger… Bullet holes. Just bullet holes. One day I decided to try and outrun the bullets.”

2. How does Kelly's profession as an undertaker shape her character?

Her profession gives her a direct, unsentimental relationship with death. She treats young victims “for all the sunrises they wouldn't get,” and she describes her work without euphemism. It also explains her empathy for Dylan and her ability to sit with the narrator's grief without flinching.

3. What does Kelly mean when she says “We're all scared”?

In Chapter 17, after the narrator admits the gun killed his daughter and that he carries it loaded, Kelly embraces him and says “We're all scared” before leaving. The line is an acknowledgment that fear is universal, not a weakness to be hidden. It is the first time the narrator feels less alone in years.

4. Why does the narrator feel small around Kelly?

The narrator says Kelly makes him feel “small and floating, like I'm dancing a waltz at the foot of a glacier.” He attributes this to her being “unknowable” to him—she is one of the few people he cannot fully capture in his own narration. When she can hear his thoughts, the feeling intensifies because she sees him completely.

5. What role does Kelly play in Dylan's story?

Kelly is one of the three people who sit with Dylan during his long unconsciousness at Frenchie's mansion. She keeps him updated on the news, editing out the shootings and protests. She also explains his backstory to the narrator: Dylan ran away from his family near DC as a child and came to work for Frenchie. She describes him as “just a kid who needs help.”

For a fuller picture of how Kelly's arc intersects with the novel's ending, see the ending explained page, or browse the questions and answers for more discussion of the book's characters and themes.