6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I'm Glad Someone Wrote This, May 4, 2009
This review is from: Plenty Enough Suck to Go Around: A Memoir of Floods, Fires, Parades, and Plywood (Paperback)
After reading the great review in the Times Picayune here I still wasn't sure that I wanted to read this book because I thought it was going to be depressing. But it was hilarious. I laughed out loud. In honesty, I also got teary at points. I think it's a good book for women who live with their boyfriends who wonder what it would be like if the shXX hit the fan!
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
pretty close to the awful truth, June 22, 2010
This review is from: Plenty Enough Suck to Go Around: A Memoir of Floods, Fires, Parades, and Plywood (Paperback)
This is a good companion book to Dan Baum's "Nine Lives". Some of Wagner's writing is cliched and the voice is still young, a little too breezy-bohemian, even for New Orleans, but the experience she relates rings true, and that is more than I can say for other memoirs.
The only criticism I have is her caricature of people whose neighborhoods did not flood as pampered ingrates. People from "Uptown" have been taking a beating for this for years, post-Katrina. There were horrible consequences other than flood which reverberated through flood-free neighborhoods and they are seldom referenced.
Many of my Uptown neighbors were forced to sell their homes because of either job loss or evacuation debts that went beyond what FEMA covered. It takes only a few months of debt to fall behind on a mortgage, especially if the house had wind damage,lost a roof, windows, doors, got wet, grew mold. Battles with insurance companies became epic, even acquired epic names; some are still going on; some litigations outlived their plaintiffs.
Now I will admit that houses in flood free neighborhoods did sell comparatively quickly in the wake of Katrina and those homeowners whose jobs were secured could find new housing outside of New Orleans and commute. But life in New Orleans is all about neighborhood--about the people living on your block, especially the eccentrics; about nearby shops and restaurants;about the local schools--both good and terrible; about the local churches and the local bars, in tandem. Losing that is like losing your closest friend. People don't want to leave their neighborhoods and relocate--even the flooded and most frangible places. Place is identity in New Orleans. And your identity as a New Orleanian is your life.
One day my next door neighbor and I were watching another neighbor leave and it was gut-wrenching. After the movers left, that woman just stood and looked at her house for a long long time. No amount of hugs or assurances that we'd see her soon, or offers of a bed if she wanted to do an overnight in the city could sweeten her grief. She had lived in that house for 15 years. She had birthed her children in that house with a midwife. During her divorce that house was her only consolation. And now, it wasn't hers anymore--snatched that fast, like a stool kicked out from under her feet. Finally, she turned and gave us a short wave, then got into her car and drove away fast, spun her wheels, like the hounds were after her. Watching her, my next door neighbor said, "Well, if ya can't live in Naw Aw'-lens, ya might as well move to f-king Texas. Or better yet, just die already." And he was right. Living in proximity of the city would be too painful. The suicides I know of second that.
There is another component to post-Katrina Uptown living that doesn't get much attention. After Katrina, contractors began buying and refurbishing houses and selling them to wealthy buyers. Neighborhoods like mine changed color and character in a way not entirely welcome. Taxes went up, and that, coupled with the exorbitant price of homeowner's and flood insurance, forced middle income people out. Rentals went up almost as high as Manhattan's. The 'funk' left the neighborhood and gentility moved in. When we bought our house in 1995, three of the houses on the block were vacant and derelict, including our own. The neighborhood was mixed in ethnicity--working to middle class. We all used everything we had to bloom the block up pretty. And to watch beloved neighbors go, to watch the character of the place changing so radically...sometimes I think that THIS is harder than holding on to nothing and fiercely bringing it back to something.
With the BP spill, New Orleans' viability is again seriously threatened and my husband and I [retired] live in a bewildered state--do we risk it and hold on--or do we go? Our mortgage will finish in four months. I often find myself like that neighbor who was forced to move, standing and just looking at my house, at the porch with its Grecian column, at my window box, at my roses, and I think, Run! Go! Go far away and don't look back or else risk losing your heart, your faith, your will irrecoverably. Just run and don't ever look back...because behind you is..no--was...paradise. It will not come again.
Very few people came away from Katrina undamaged. Everyone, even my dentist, knows of a suicide or of a disproportionate number of deaths amongst acquaintances and friends, sudden cancers, strokes, heart ailments so ravaging that the afflicted did not make the five year mark; and we watch those who did sag now under the stress of the BP catastrophe in the Gulf. We keep telling each other how resilient New Orleans is, that this place, whose very existence relies on its ability to cheat nature, is, by default, miraculous. But it gets harder to hope when the onslaught of grief never ends. In that Wagner is right. There sure is plenty enough suck to go around, even in Uptown New Orleans.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Stunning Memoir of Louisiana Post-Katrina, September 6, 2009
This review is from: Plenty Enough Suck to Go Around: A Memoir of Floods, Fires, Parades, and Plywood (Paperback)
"Save yourself some grief. S*** goes wrong all day. Every day. For over a year. Everything is booby-trapped. That's how it is. We're used to ten things going wrong in a row. You're on number one."
Wagner has an important story to tell. In the aftermath of Katrina, instead of leaving the tragedy and loss, instead of purifying her life of the decay and dissolution that followed, she stays--to replace what was lost, to fix what was broken, to mend what was torn. The memoir of the two years that followed is tragic and heartrending, but necessary for people--like me--who witnessed with distant austerity on the news one more natural disaster plaguing the American coast.
From the fires of Wagner's firsthand accounting of disaster comes the sprouting of new ferns, but not without its travails and traumas. Her memoir evokes the bitter frustration of swimming against the currents of fear, doubt, and denial. With sweat and blood, Wagner and her boyfriend slowly rebuild not only a battered house, but a battered life to restore a New Orleans aura that--though beaten--could not broken. By the faith and perseverance of those not unlike herself--who refused to give up on their little slice of home in a place where the iced coffee is always sweet and crawfish is always on the menu--New Orleans slowly recovers its glory, prestige, and notorious nature as the most fascinating city of cultural diversity in the South.
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