Customer Reviews

The Five People You Meet in Hell: Surviving Katrina

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

 

 

Like Robert Smallwood, I, too, am a New Orleans writer who rode out Hurricane Katrina in a French Quarter apartment. I stayed through the storm and for two days afterward until conditions deteriorated so badly that I had to leave, along with the 87 year old woman in my charge. Close to 70% of the people who died during during the storm and as a direct result of it were 65 and over. This woman, strong as she is at her age, probably wouldn't have made it through the conditions we had to endure.

During the storm and for several weeks afterward, including my own evacuation and return to the city a week later, I took notes on a hand-held mini-cassette recorder. Someday I will write my own book on what it was like or I will incorporate my experiences into a broader format. For now I am just trying to survive in a region that was devastated by one of the worst natural and man-made disasters in our nation's history.

For a "reviewer" on solid ground, well above sea level, in West Chester, Pennsylvania to question the credentials of someone who survived this disaster and wrote a book about it, shows incredible ignorance regarding the situation and a lack of basic human sensitivity. Just because the French Quarter didn't flood doesn't mean it got off the hook unscathed. There was a tremendous amount of wind damage done to many of the Quarter's fragile, 200 year-old structures and public places.

The Quarter, along with the rest of the city and most of the region, were without electricity, gas, clean running water and other vital services for an entire month. Police and fire protection and medical services were nonexistent during those chaotic first few days. Law and order completely broke down and tens of thousands of people were left to fend for themselves without essential resources. Let anyone try surviving those kinds of conditions in West Chester, Pennsylvania or anywhere else. Hopefully Dana Y. Boles will never have to experience anything like this, especially during a winter as cold and brutal as the summer of 2005 was hot and steamy here in New Orleans.

Undoubtedly there will be other books written on Katrina from other survivors, some of whom were among those dramatically rescued from rooftops. Those books, and all others written about the disaster -- including Mr. Smallwood's -- are all important contributions to the public record and the world's body of knowlege. These are the time capsules future scholars and others are going to be consulting when they do their research, in much the same way as Samuel Pepys' diaries are used as a reference point on life in London during the restoration of the Stuart monarchy in the 1660s. Especially his account of the Great Fire of London in 1666, an urban catastrophe on a par with that of New Orleans in 2005.

What Mr. Smallwood has done in his book is put a human face on the disaster. It is a slice of life through a window peering into a difficult time, and a testament to how strong, resourceful people survived through it. It may be easy for someone 1,500 miles away to self-righteously pontificate about people looting stores for essentials like food, water and baby supplies, but at that point in time, no one knew the cavalry was on its way with MRE's.

In fact, no one here at Ground Zero knew much of anything. Cell phones were useless, as were most land phone lines. We had no electricity and no TV or computers. The radio stations that managed to stay on the air told us nothing about levee breaks, rescue efforts or anything else that would have helped us better understand our plight. Radio stations here no longer have news crews out reporting on breaking stories. Most of us holed up in the French Quarter didn't know that 80% of the city was underwater or that the water creeping up Canal Street to the edge of the Quarter was coming from a levee breach five miles away. People everywhere else in the country knew more about what was going on than those of us who were here.

Robert Smallwood has given us an excellent accounting of what it was like during a period of anarchy unlike anything anyone in this nation has ever seen within our boundaries. It will stand up to historical scrutiny, and will undoubtedly be consulted as firsthand source material long after all of us are gone. No better praise can be offered than that.

Dean M. Shapiro

As a resident of the french quarter, and a familiar face in some of the local haunts mentioned in Smallwood's book, I can tell you with certainty that this is a NON FICTION account of hurricane activity in the quarter. I have read negative reviews because Smallwood discusses procuring beer, the "pillhead", et al, but this is how life works in the quarter. We were very blessed to have avoided the flooding that plagued our surrounding areas, and we never forget how lucky we are - but this is not merely an account of hurricane survival in new orleans - it is LIFE in the QUARTER. anyone who knows can tell you that just as New Orleans is a seperate entity from the rest of the country, the Quarter is a locale unto itself. If you want to know how the quarter rats (as we call ourselves) survived Katrina, read this book. Ya heard me, darlin?

As a New Orleans resident, I read this book with interest. One of the first to come out with a first person account of their experience, Smallwood's book was refreshing. With humor and a writing style that carries you along like you're riding a wave, he recounts his days after Katrina devastated our city. He reveals his sadness as well, and the fear that pervaded the streets. What all of us who were here learned, was that our experience and our perception was uniquely ours, and communication was difficult in any event, so life was very definitely lived in the moment, and in that moment what mattered was survival, both emotional and physical. Smallwood managed to bring his unique experience to these pages with a minimum of over the top angst or political blaming. The book shows us what his "moment" looked and felt like to him. In doing that, he has added to what will inevitably become the "literature of Katrina." He makes no excuses for himself or anyone else, and he shouldn't. Read all the scholarly books on Katrina. Read all the lyrical books about Katrina. They're all worthwhile. But make sure to read Smallwood's book. You'll feel like he's telling you his story over a drink at Molly's.

When I read a book it is to gain a personal perspective of the lives and events of people different from my own. While Mr. Smallwood's account did not cover the raw grittiness and horrific events that made for so much news in Katrina's aftermath it is an interesting read of another person's experiences. While not downplaying the human tragedy that occurred in New Orleans I enjoyed this other perspective. One thing about New Orleans is it's diversity and Mr. Smallwood's experience, as he relates so well in his book, provides those of us that live on the other side of the continent a different view of New Orleans than the ugly side we saw on the news.

If you feel you are being challenged by circumstances in your life, a few pages into The Five People You Meet in Hell: Surviving Katrina by Robert Smallwood will provide you with the needed reality check. It did me.

This autobiographical memoir of the days of and following the disastrous hurricane that hit New Orleans in August of 2005 is an eyewitness account of a French Quarter resident.

This book gives a palpable, personal view of the day by day survival of those remaining in the French Quarter. Some rose to heroic heights; some snapped.

The book engaged me - I read it in two sittings unable to put it down. The narrator and his neighbors are memorable.

Personally, I experienced Katrina from the safety of two or three degrees of separation: there was a family from New Orleans who moved into a rental nearby, there was a neighbor with family in New Orleans scrambling to find accommodations for loved ones, there was Sage Business Partner Patricia Welther of Help Solutions in Baton Rouge who set up CRM systems to assist New Orleans businesses - but reading this book gave me a gut-wrenching view that I had not seen before.

I have read the mostly favorable reviews on Amazon. The unfavorable reviews were critical of the personality of the author and/or the specifics of his experience. I find those criticisms to be at best disingenuous and unrealistic. A personal account is just that - personal. There is authenticity (and courage) in sharing the one's own truth. Also, there was criticism that the French Quarter was not hit as hard as other areas, so somehow this account is not the real deal. Again, I was scratching my head as one's experience can only be one's experience.

This is the true story of Robert aka "Bobby" Smallwood and his tale of survival in the wake of Katrina. Robert's story is about the day of the storm and the weeks following the storm as he saw it from his home in the French Quarter. My fiance and I purchased this novel from a store near the A&P Robert talks about in this novel on Royal Street yesterday and both of us read the book before we were home again the same day.

This novel is simple and elegant in its simpleness. Robert tells his tale (interspursed with pictures he took during and after the storm) simply - it is as if you are reading his private journals throughout the ordeal. He talks of the people that helped get him through the ordeal (the 5 people mentioned in the title) and what it was really like. The French Quarter may not have flooded, but there were different battles there including looters (for good and bad purposes), blood thirsty cops and fires not including the lack of gas, water, electric and communication to battle against.

There are no near death experiences, no life affiriming moments and no heroics. This is not a woe-is-me tale. It is, however, the honest tale of a man who survived and greater than that, a neighborhood and lifestyle that survived against all odds.

This is an open, honest, detailed, account of the days in the French Quarter following Katrina. I love New Orleans and the Quarter and am a frequent visitor. I can close my eyes and see places and people he is referring to. I am thankful that Mr. Smallwood took the time during this crisis to chronicle the events and share them with us. The characters are real and through his honesty, the author makes you feel as though you live there and are his neighbor as well. I especially like Mr. Larry, who reminds me so much of my Dad who was a Bosun's Mate in the Merchant Marine; I can appreciate and relate to this salty character.

Throughout this tragedy, it was the people who stuck together and made it through by helping each other. I believe that New Orleans will return and be better than ever!

Being from New Orleans until recently I thought this book was a great perspective to "the thing". It made me laugh and cry. I enjoyed reading about what happened from a French Quarter view. A Katrina book that I like even better that Amazon does not have is "One Dead in Attic" by Chris Rose. It is an even more human perspective of the aftermath of the storm and survival in the big easy.

The book is actually written with amazing detail of Smallwood's experiences in the French Quarter during and after the storm. You feel like you're there. It reads fast and is a real page turner.

The second (shorter) part of the book may take an adjustment for readers. The author takes us through some of his experiences in the months before the storm hit, so we can see an inside view of the Bohemian life one can live in the French Quarter. He pulls no punches. He flashes his brilliance as he treats us to the inner mind of what must be literary genius -he gives us simple and beuatiful poetry, the beginning of an intriguing play and also a screenplay - all about completely different subjects. He really shows range that most of us can only imagine.

If you can take it, as a whole, this is the work of what may be a modern literary genius in the making.

I picked this book up recently since I have been reading others on Katrina and all I can say is WOW! Smallwood takes you through a scintillating account of the actual hurricane hitting and his daring exploits in the aftermath to ensure the survival of his neighbors. It does take place in the French Quarter so there is the expected debauchery and defiance, and you also get to laugh at his gallows humor and sarcasm.

It is written in such a smooth but arresting style - very unique - that I couldn't stop reading it. I raced through it and wanted more.

This guy can really write and we may be seeing a new talent burst on the scene as a result of Katrina's impact. He even laced the book with a dozens of photos that he personally took which documents his experience.