I have a new review up at Voices for A Season of Night by Ian McNulty. This is one of the first books I've read that doesn't dwell on the politics or blame but rather offers a personal take on the nuts and bolts of living in Mid-City just a few months after Katrina. Here's a bit:
While there have been more than few books and articles published on surviving Katrina and the levee failure, few have dealt with the nuts and bolts of living in the city afterward. Author Ian McNulty moves into this relatively unfamiliar territory with A Season of Night, his recollection of life in Mid-City in the weeks after the storm. Rather than dwelling on the politics of blame or destruction, McNulty writes about how it was cleaning up the mess in his house and going without hot water or electricity for months on end. Ultimately, the book serves almost as a catalog of evidence — a literary proof of a city’s struggle to live. McNulty has written a new chapter in the history of New Orleans and hopefully his careful study of the minutia of streets patrolled by the National Guard, parties by candlelight and bars open for business with doors that barely swing on the hinges will be the beginning of more explorations into not so much how cities nearly die, but more importantly, how they cling to life.
Urban and social historians are going to find books like this one as treasure in the decades to come. When they are done well, as McNulty's most certainly is, they share as much about cities themselves as they do about the people within them.
We will be learning about Katrina and the levee failure for a long long time; A Season of Night is the kind of book that furthers that education in a myriad of unexpected but significant ways.
