![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
[Review] 1 Dead in Attic by Chris Rose
Oct. 15th, 2024 12:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
petrea_mitchellFull title: 1 Dead in Attic: After Katrina
Author: Chris Rose
Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2007
Note: I planned for this to be one of my reviews all the way back in August when I signed up for the review-a-thon. The fact that it is now timely is just serendipity, I swear.
1 Dead in Attic is a collection of columns written by Chris Rose for the New Orleans Times-Picayune, starting from just after Hurricane Katrina and continuing until more than a year afterward.
It reads like a post-apocalyptic epistolary novel, but covering the messy middle time that few post-apocalyptic novels deal with, between the event itself and the distant future when the society has healed itself. The New Orleans of 1 Dead in Attic is a city in progress-- favorite businesses now sitting abandoned, damaged homes waiting on insurance checks, vanished acquaintances who might be dead or might just have moved away. Even several months after The Thing, as he calls it, as the world's attention has turned away and the big local events have been resurrected, Rose is able to give some friends a look at still-wrecked neighborhoods, and they encounter a jazz funeral for someone who passed away in the storm, just now being buried. Column after column notes the still-visible brown mark left by the height of the flood.
There are some light notes, particularly early on. There are tales of petty revenge over improper fridge disposal, and the magical moments when the toilets work again and Rose first encounters a working traffic light. But rebuilding is a long, grim slog.
Rose counts himself lucky because he and his family were able to evacuate to Vicksburg for the actual storm, their house was hardly damaged, and his wife and kids are able to stay with relatives in Maryland so the kids can go to school in a normal environment. But in the final act of the book, he is forced to admit that he too is a victim of Katrina, as the separation from his family and the constant focus on the aftermath of the storm take their psychological toll.
1 Dead in Attic is a powerful book, and a very informative book if you want to understand what parts of North Carolina will be going through in the months ahead, but it is not a happy book. Don't read this if you're already feeling down.
Author: Chris Rose
Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2007
Note: I planned for this to be one of my reviews all the way back in August when I signed up for the review-a-thon. The fact that it is now timely is just serendipity, I swear.
1 Dead in Attic is a collection of columns written by Chris Rose for the New Orleans Times-Picayune, starting from just after Hurricane Katrina and continuing until more than a year afterward.
It reads like a post-apocalyptic epistolary novel, but covering the messy middle time that few post-apocalyptic novels deal with, between the event itself and the distant future when the society has healed itself. The New Orleans of 1 Dead in Attic is a city in progress-- favorite businesses now sitting abandoned, damaged homes waiting on insurance checks, vanished acquaintances who might be dead or might just have moved away. Even several months after The Thing, as he calls it, as the world's attention has turned away and the big local events have been resurrected, Rose is able to give some friends a look at still-wrecked neighborhoods, and they encounter a jazz funeral for someone who passed away in the storm, just now being buried. Column after column notes the still-visible brown mark left by the height of the flood.
There are some light notes, particularly early on. There are tales of petty revenge over improper fridge disposal, and the magical moments when the toilets work again and Rose first encounters a working traffic light. But rebuilding is a long, grim slog.
Rose counts himself lucky because he and his family were able to evacuate to Vicksburg for the actual storm, their house was hardly damaged, and his wife and kids are able to stay with relatives in Maryland so the kids can go to school in a normal environment. But in the final act of the book, he is forced to admit that he too is a victim of Katrina, as the separation from his family and the constant focus on the aftermath of the storm take their psychological toll.
1 Dead in Attic is a powerful book, and a very informative book if you want to understand what parts of North Carolina will be going through in the months ahead, but it is not a happy book. Don't read this if you're already feeling down.
