Customer Reviews

1 Dead in Attic: After Katrina

5 star:		(37)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

There are times when I sit and wonder, Am I crazy? Am I crazy?, especially when I look at the state of modern America these days. Back in 2005 I watched with the rest of us the terrible storm that swept over New Orleans, and the knowledge that something truly awful was going to happen. With it came the knowledge that there was going to be damn little that any of us could do about it either.

People being plucked from rooftops by helicopters. Water up to the roofline. Trees, cars, and everything else -- including the dead -- floating in water that crawled with god only knew what. The real horror came a little later, when it was realized that many did not survive, abandoned in the mad rush to get to safety. That's what shook me up the most; it wasn't the looting or violence, but that we, America, had left the disabled and elderly to die in their homes.

Writer Chris Rose, a commentator with the Times-Picayune in New Orleans, has collected his columns from the newspaper into a book that takes a hard look at the Crescent City, and what life was like after Katrina left. He talks about what it's like to come home and find your house gone. Or what it's like to drive along the street and see household contents piled up on the edges. Or that nary a rat was to be seen for weeks after the hurricane. Most chilling for me was the description of bodies, or the messages scrawled on homes mentioning the number of dead that were within. And finally, The Smell that engulfed everything for weeks afterwards, a stench that crawled into everything as trash decomposed.

They say that writing can help to heal the effects of trauma. And Rose is clearly using this form of therapy as he observes not only the attempts of himself and his family, and those that chose to return to New Orleans, but also the reactions of the world beyond New Orleans. There are all of those nameless, countless volunteers that came to rescue and help, giving of the very best of themselves. There are the stories of the survivors, and the curious ways that many of them have taken to cope -- Magnet Man has rather unique perspective, and the neighborhood Cat Lady.

And in among the good, there is also the bad. A guy who dumped his refrigerator full of rotting food in one of the few clean parks that were cleared after the storm. The shooting and violence that regularly occurred. The endless blame game among the politicians. The incompetence of FEMA and the federal government to actually do something to help these people.

As I read, I found myself astonished. By the resilience of those who have gone back, and are determined to see New Orleans come back. Equally so by the callous disregard of the rest of the world to remember that people are still homeless, hungry and in need there. I found myself getting angry, and feeling shame that there wasn't much I could do besides trying to give donations to charity, and regularly sending my good wishes and saying I haven't forgotten you to my friends who have decided to stick it out in New Orleans.

Each of the essays in this book are not much more than a few pages long, originally published. Rose doesn't hold anything back; he lets his own despair, anger, and hopelessness show. But there are stories of amazing generosity and care, and that sometimes gets overlooked in among all of the other stories. And finally, there is New Orleans herself, which is facing decades of rebuilding ahead.

In the world of instant news, all too often a disaster is covered for a few days or weeks, then brushed to the back of the room as some new horror comes crawling across our television or computer screens. This book was a vivid reminder to me that more often than not, recovery isn't a measure of weeks or months, but sometimes will take years to occur. If you have the mental strength to want to know some of what is happening in the New Orleans of today, read this book.

Yes, it will bother you. You'll probably get upset while reading it. You'll probably have to set it aside now and then to catch your breath. But if you want an honest assessment of what Katrina did, this is a good start to understanding the hearts and minds of those who have chosen to stay.

Five stars.

Recommended.

Chris Rose was a Pulitzer nominee for his post-Katrina writing. I was glad to see the Times-Picayune snag some well-deserved Pulitzers, but sad that Nicholas Kristof (however much I like his columns) edged out Rose.

In any event, this is a stand-out collection of columns--really, in most cases, very brief essays.

When I first read the book, in a small-press edition, it stayed with me for days. No matter what else I was reading or doing, I saw the people Rose writes about, sitting on door stoops, calling him "baby" in grocery stores, struggling to rebuild after the unthinkable, taping up their stinking refrigerators. In his stories about trying to raise children, battling depression, and yes, refrigerators, Rose makes it clear that the hurricane was an event, but Katrina is a condition New Orleans struggles with every day.

A year later, this book is now available in a new, expanded edition. One or two essays are a little over-sentimental, but never mind. This is an amazing book. (Read it alongside, or after, "Breach of Faith.") Rose's direct prose and grim, funny, heart-ful imagery make this book essential reading for any caring person, and a must for library collections.

Friends in the New Orleans area recommended this book. I LOVED it. Then I gave it to my husband and my sister and they loved it too. Written by a reporter from the New Orleans Times Picayune newspaper, who was there during those awful early days of the aftermath. I was there 3 months after Katrina and met locals who shared stories similar to his. The book is engrossing and sad but, believe it or not, it's actually funny in some parts. Chris Rose tells his story beautifully. This is a book people from New Orleans will give to their grandchildren to explain what it was really like after Katrina.

I've become a regular reader of Chris Rose's column on www.nola.com and I'm glad to see his writings on Katrina have been published in book form. He has suffered along with the people that he writes about, and to read the personal stories of people in New Orleans will tear your heart out. I am glad he, and the rest of the Times-Picayune staff, have been there tell this tale.

The most personal book I've read about Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath in New Orleans is this collection of newspaper columns from New Orleans Times Picayune writer Chris Rose. Proving that living somewhere involves more than occupying a house there, Rose seemingly suffers the trauma of all New Orleanians, even though his own house and family endure essentially no damage from the storm (other than a four-month relocation of wife and children to Maryland). The title refers to words painted on the side of a house as a message to recovery crews. More than a year after the storm, the words are still on that house.

Along with chronicling Rose's personal journey, the book serves a second purpose of telling the stories of dozens of other New Orleanians and "The Thing", as Rose calls Katrina. Among my favorites is the guy who collects magnets off the thousands of abandoned rerfigerators to cover his truck. Rose waxes poetic and fantastic along the way. You'll love "Refrigerator City" and maybe even his rants about Mayor Ray Nagin's "Chocolate City" comment (the column about breakfast with God and Martin Luther King, Jr. is one of a kind.)

This second edition is a combination of the popular shorter first edition and a second book initially intended to be published separately as "Purple Upside Down Car" (a phrase taken from Rose's young son noticing one of the many destroyed cars around the city).

My only complaint with the book is with its somewhat haphazard organization. The book is organized into several subsections and is for the most part chronological, but often not. Still, the columns within each subsection don't necessarily fit together that well. It's a minor complaint, since each column is so interesting that the reader is pulled along from one to the next. The book ends with Rose's year-end column from 2006, more than a year after the storm.

Four-and-a-half stars (rounded up to five for intensity and revelation) for the personal story of a storm's impact on a man and his city.

Chris Rose has written one of the most eloquent love songs for the hard-hit and painfully depressed City of New Orleans. It's like a love song to an embittered lover, but a lover nonetheless. Rose, resident funny man of The Times-Picayune newspaper, is the chief troubadour of the Big Easy. He is the most trusted and read commentator in the city.

In his book titled 1 Dead in Attic, you will find some of Mr. Rose's best columns from the Picayune, stories detailing life in an American war zone. Rose waxes poetic with "Refrigerator Town." He writes, "In Refrigerator Town there was a Council full of Clowns...." Well said. At least one of these clowns just made a plea deal with the feds and will be heading to jail.

He takes stock in his own life with "Lurching Towards Babylon." He says, "I spend my days like everyone else, lurching from one `episode' to the next, just trying live, just trying to survive, just trying not to crack up and embarrass myself, my family and my newspaper." In the piece he goes on to tell us how he confronts a litterer on the streets of New Orleans (a city full of litter), and what's the reason? IT MATTERS! Dang it, it matters now more than ever. Everything matters in a place like this. In Louisiana after the storm, it matters. Rose is ready to kick tail over litter, to take his risks. The book is like this at every turn. Either Rose is being courageous by simply telling us the truth or he's telling us about someone else's act of courage. The title, 1 Dead in Attic, is pretty much a downer and so is the post-Katrina landscape, but there's a story beneath the story, and Rose gives it to us in little anecdotes and examples of pure human triumph.

In addition to the essays, you'll find numerous black and white photographs by Charlie Varley, the kind of pictures that illustrate the gravity of daily life in the City that Care Forgot.

For those interested in learning more about Louisiana, the book stands alongside the giants of Louisiana literature and history: All the King's Men (Robert Penn Warren), The Moviegoer (Walker Percy), The Awakening (Kate Chopin), The Earl of Louisiana (A.J. Liebling), Huey Long (T. Harry Williams), Welding with Children (Tim Gautreaux), Modern Baptists (James Wilcox), A Lesson Before Dying (Ernest Gaines), and Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 (John Barry), among others.

I highly recommend 1 Dead in Attic for its detailed and passionate glimpse of real life in New Orleans post-Katrina. One might call it the best "post-apocalypse" book on New Orleans yet.

Reviewed by Dayne Sherman,
Author of Welcome to the Fallen Paradise, a novel about Louisiana

I live in New Orleans, and my wife and I lost everything we owned in Hurricane Katrina. However, we evacuated safely the Saturday before the flood, and so were spared the horror of the flooding and its aftermath. It's a measure of how bad things were around here that we lost every single thing we owned (except for 5 days worth of clothing, and a few toiletries), but we feel like we're some of the lucky ones, because so many people had (and still have) it so much worse. Not to mention, of course, the 1300+ people who died as a result of the failure of the levees.

Since the storm, I have had a semi-obsession with books about Katrina. I have read 6 or 7 so far. And while there are plenty of books that have a lot more actual information about the storm, down to almost minute-by-minute chronologies, there is NO other book that even comes close to this one in terms of describing what it was like to actually live here after Katrina.

Before the storm, I actually didn't read Chris Rose's column in our paper. He wrote mostly humorous pieces that didn't interest me much. After the storm, I was absolutely riveted to his columns as I read them online from Dallas, where we were evacuated to for 4 months. If you want a history of the storm, what happened, when it happened, and why, then buy another book. But if you want to know what people went through AFTER the storm, you won't find a better book than this.

Chris Rose absolutely deserved his Pulitzer nomination.

We visited New Orleans for the first time since Pre Katrina, for the Sugar Bowl last week.

I was amazed, first, that the city was so, well, alive. That allayed some of my fears, if not all. Going into several shops to find an item for a friend of mine who was a NO resident, I saw copy after copy of this book, and kept being drawn to it.

Finally, on my last day there, I said 'What the heck, I've got a little extra that I didn't spend' and paid the $15. I started reading it immediately, and haven't put it down. It's a longer read than what I usually read (Fiction), and so it's taking me longer, but this book portrays the people of New Orleans in a way that I have yet to see, and probably will not see again.

It tells of the heartbreak, laughter, tears, joy, reunions, coming home for the first time, it tells of all the things that went through anyone's soul affected by Katrina.

It's not a sad book, not all the time. There are chapters that I read with tears of laughter rolling down my face {Running the Barbershop with power from a car battery) and there are chapters that made me think it was I who survived, I could see it, the 9th Ward, the houses, the 'Blue', it was all there in my mind's eye, and I cried inside for those that made it out, and those who didn't. I cried for the couple, the husband who died of a heart attack while the wife held on, trying to stay alive.

I cried for the animals, the thousands that were washed away with the waters.

I cried for Chris Rose, who without him, and his words, I would have never known what it was really like that day, those weeks, those months. He brought me a little closer to the truth, and for that I will always be grateful. I will always have images burned into my mind, but Chris made some of those images come alive with color, and not seem so gray.

Being the wife of a writer/Editor, I know that experiences are the best subject matter. I also know that you have to be a GREAT writer to make it work, and Chris Rose is that.

Althought N'awlins isn't 'home' for us, it has, and will always be a second home. We both grew up vacationing there, living there, even for a time. We both have life long friends who live there. We found out last week that we lost one of those friends, Charles Ramsey, to ALS. We both mourned the loss of everything and everyone in that great city in August of 05.

But yet, we will always return. Going back just made it 'ok' in my heart, I guess, for I'm ready to make it again. The city has come back, yes, there are places that will never be the same, there are things that cannot be replaced, lives lost, families displaced, but, for the most part, NO is still the NO I remember.

I cannot, however, say the same for Biloxi. That, in itself, was a whole other grieving process. So many memories, memories that I will not be able to re-create with my own, washed away that day, only to be held in my mind.

Thank you, Chris Rose, for allowing me to see that it wasn't all horrible, that life will go on, and that New Orleans, as a whole, is a survivor.

1 Dead in Attic by Chris Rose. The title is taken from writing on a flood destroyed house, indicating yet another victim of the Hurricane Katrina New Orleans tragedy .

This book, written by an award-winning Times Picayune columnist, contains one-chapter short stories that are simply incredible.

Rather than outline what lead to Katrina, he focuses on the aftermath of the hurricane. His heart rendering account of a year and a half after is so well written that at times I laughed and others I cried. His pithy, heart breaking and poignant tales of the people who are the soul of New Orleans will haunt me for a long time. I laughed at the tale of refrigerator wars; I cried for a city trying to re-claim itself.

After reading this I feel as though I've walked the streets of New Orleans, gleaned some knowledge of what makes the city tick -- the good (those stubborn hold outs who want to rebuild and renew) , the bad (the local politicians, the Army Core of Engineers and the ineffective mayor) and the ugly (very nasty culture that loots, robs, rapes and waits for handouts and blames all others.)

Living in Kansas City, Missouri, I wasn't too far from Katrina-ravaged New Orleans, but I was far enough away that I (like many, many others) had no clue what was really going on down there in the days and months after the hurricane. I picked this book up while wandering through a boutique in the French Quarter and purchased it because I wanted to better educate myself on what "really" happened. Or, at least as much as I could learn by reading a paperback four and a half years after the event.

I couldn't put the book down the entire trip! It was beautiful, disturbing, disgusting, stunning, funny, shocking, and educational. I won't ever say that I now know how it felt to be there, no one ever could unless they were, yet I now feel much more emotionally connected to the storm and the aftermath than I did before. Chris writes in such a way as to allow the reader to follow in his footsteps - to see what he sees and smell what he smells and feel what he feels. While my emotions were arguably an insignificant fraction of what he and the rest of New Orleans went through, they were emotions nonetheless. Emotions and a bit more knowledge about what did "really" happen.

And that was all that I wanted - just a sliver of understanding. Thumbs-up, Chris, thumbs-up.