Nine Lives: Death and Life in New Orleans by Dan Baum
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
99% of the time I read fiction. I enjoy getting lost in other people’s worlds and words and non-fiction doesn’t usually give me the same sense of “otherness”. This book reads like fiction – the larger than life characters (including the city itself), the lyrical way the author strings the various story lines together and the incredible situations that take place leading up to and after Katrina. It’s hard to imagine a place where all of this could happen – but it does. Dan Baum does a magnificent job in bringing this all to life and does it in a way that isn’t preachy, disrespectful or insensitive. At first I had trouble keeping track of all the characters but then I realized that, just like those people who live in New Orleans, I needed to relax into the flow of the book and it would all work out. I finished this book three days ago and still find myself thinking about one of the characters and wondering how they’re doing…