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iambranchingout's review against another edition
2.0
Not for me.
I could see that there was an important story in there but I spent most of my reading time arguing with the writing style, largely screaming “show, don’t tell!” I did not enjoy the author spelling out every thought his characters had and every emotion that they felt, particularly in the scenes where Craig and Alice were arguing.
New Orleans is absolutely the stand out character in this novel and it was heartbreaking to read in breathtaking detail the horrors that befell the city but I found the human inhabitants to be flat stereotypes in comparison.
I could see that there was an important story in there but I spent most of my reading time arguing with the writing style, largely screaming “show, don’t tell!” I did not enjoy the author spelling out every thought his characters had and every emotion that they felt, particularly in the scenes where Craig and Alice were arguing.
New Orleans is absolutely the stand out character in this novel and it was heartbreaking to read in breathtaking detail the horrors that befell the city but I found the human inhabitants to be flat stereotypes in comparison.
beastreader's review against another edition
2.0
SJ Williams works with his hands as a carpenter. He was born and raised in New Orleans. He also cares for his sister, Lucy and her son, Wesley. They are a close knit family. Everyone who knows SJ can pretty much call him a friend. Friends are important, especially when you live in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans.
Craig Donaldson, on the other hand couldn’t be any different from SJ. He moved to New Orleans with his family. He works as the editor of the city’s newspaper. He and his family have issues. At any moment it could all come crashing down. His wife hates New Orleans and wants to move back. When disaster strikes in the form of Hurricane Katrina, both families will fight for their lives.
I have to admit that the book summary was more interesting than the actual book was. While I did at first find SJ Williams a likable guy, he was the only one I really found some interest in. The rest of the characters couldn’t capture what Mr. Piazza was trying to share with his story regarding two families who have just faced disaster to survive. This is a book that should have been good based on actual events but unfortunately it fell short and was somewhat unmemorable.
Craig Donaldson, on the other hand couldn’t be any different from SJ. He moved to New Orleans with his family. He works as the editor of the city’s newspaper. He and his family have issues. At any moment it could all come crashing down. His wife hates New Orleans and wants to move back. When disaster strikes in the form of Hurricane Katrina, both families will fight for their lives.
I have to admit that the book summary was more interesting than the actual book was. While I did at first find SJ Williams a likable guy, he was the only one I really found some interest in. The rest of the characters couldn’t capture what Mr. Piazza was trying to share with his story regarding two families who have just faced disaster to survive. This is a book that should have been good based on actual events but unfortunately it fell short and was somewhat unmemorable.
amycrea's review against another edition
4.0
I discovered this book through the Tournament of Books. There's been some criticism of its structure and characterizations, and I can't disagree with the critiques. And yet...it was still a great read. Easy to get lost in.
sitnstew's review against another edition
4.0
I think anyone who visits New Orleans leaves feeling like they belong there. I personally think there is a bit of N.O. in everyone. After spending a month in the city this last year the city called my name and my wife and I seriously considered moving there. That's the primary reason I scooped up City of Refuge. I wanted to remember a bit of what I felt when I was there. It's a book about Katrina and how it affected two families from very different sides of the socioeconomic spectrum but it's also about that magical thing you find in New Orleans that plants itself in your soul when you go there.
Tom Piazza is from New Orleans and his writing reflects that fact. His love and passion for the culture and city permeates through the pages and makes the story a pleasure to read. It is a very painful and heart-wrenching story but it is told in a beautifully poetic way.
I'm certain that a big reason I enjoyed this book so thoroughly is because of my time spent in the city soaking up the culture but it is simply a fantastic book. I highly recommend it to anyone - even those not particularly interested in reading about the events of Katrina.
Tom Piazza is from New Orleans and his writing reflects that fact. His love and passion for the culture and city permeates through the pages and makes the story a pleasure to read. It is a very painful and heart-wrenching story but it is told in a beautifully poetic way.
I'm certain that a big reason I enjoyed this book so thoroughly is because of my time spent in the city soaking up the culture but it is simply a fantastic book. I highly recommend it to anyone - even those not particularly interested in reading about the events of Katrina.
beatniksafari's review against another edition
4.0
A sweeping look at Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, from the viewpoints of two New Orleans families, one white and one black. The novel does not pretend to be unbiased or apolitical. It's clear where Piazza's sympathies and frustrations lie, and sometimes those opinions skirt the edge of interfering with the storyline. Yet the story of Craig, SJ, and their remarkable, resilient city compelled my attention beyond any dissonant moments.
nicolebonia's review against another edition
5.0
SJ Williams and his family have lived in New Orleans all of their lives. Their roots and ties in the community are very strong. All that SJ has left of his immediate family is his sister Lucy, who has struggled over the years with drug and alcohol dependency, her son and his nephew, Wesley, and a grown daughter who has moved away from New Orleans. Wesley is a teenager, a little lost from growing up amidst the uncertainty of his mother’s lifestyle and love, and chafing at the strict example and path of discipline that his uncle would have him follow. He is struggling to find a place in New Orleans society that is his own and stumbling along the way. SJ lives a strictly regimented life as a way of keeping the haunting demons of war and the death of his wife at bay, his only wish to keep his remaining family in one piece.
Craig Donaldson and his wife, Alice, are a couple on the brink of losing it all. Their marriage, and the life in New Orleans which had once been a fulfilling and exciting adventure is crumbling slowly under the weight of festering anger and resentment, exacerbated by the changing visions each has for their family. Even as they are working on their marriage with a counselor, it is an exercise in force of will for them to communicate civilly with each other. Craig is satisfied with the life they have made in New Orleans, he loves the culture, his friends and the environment- he’s also happy enough in his position as editor of a local New Orleans Magazine. Fatigued by frequent hurricane evacuations, Alice is increasing stressed about the violence in the city, their quality of life and the safety of the couple’s two young children, Annie and Malcolm. Both families are at the edge and doing the best they can to hold it together when their lives are further devastated by Katrina.
I read Nine Lives: Life and Death in New Orleans, by Dan Baum earlier this year and I was blown away and spent weeks talking it up to my mom and my friends. So when Lisa from TLC Book Tours asked me if I would like to read City of Refuge by Tom Piazza I jumped at the opportunity to read more on the subject of New Orleans and Katrina, and then immediately started to worry that I wouldn’t like the book. Nine Lives is non-fiction, extremely well written, and shed so much light on the culture and workings of New Orleans, both before and after Katrina, that I would know immediately if City of Refuge wasn’t authentic. I worried that the fiction wouldn’t hold up to all my newly learned facts.
My fears were groundless because Tom Piazza gets it. He gets New Orleans, he gets fiction, and good dialogue, and intricate and conflicted characters, and lots of other things that made this a wonderfully touching and interesting book, which was very hard to put down. It was also grey! And I love grey in books because it means that I will talk to myself constantly about the characters and what is going on, and what they should have done, and how I love them but they are wrong, or hate them but have to admit that they are right- and I did that with this book right from the beginning! Every time I picked it up I was completely absorbed in the lives and heartaches of these families as they tried to find their way.
When a book is really good, sometimes there isn’t much that can be said without, I don’t know, gushing. This is book where the writing is wonderful, rich and intimate, as are the relationships between the characters. You will easily learn a lot about New Orleans’ colorful history and the politics and circumstances which made Katrina in particular so devastating, you will learn about the changing attitudes the people of this country had toward Katrina and the people of New Orleans, and frankly you will learn things that will have never occurred to you before because they are just not within your realm of experience.
I have never lived in a place afflicted by large storms, with 55 mph winds, that is in actuality beneath sea level. Who knew that if you can afford it that you book a hotel room outside of town for when you evacuate? It makes sense when you think about it, but the thought never occurred to me, and it’s what people have to do, sometimes several times a season. I’m not even sure if I would be able to swing that. I did know that you have to prepare your windows for when storms come, but who knew that you had to worry about someone stealing the piece of wood that you use to secure your window? That’s what happened to SJ and it’s probably happened to someone else too. There were a lot of little details like that, which contributed to making this story so real. I just loved it. So much work would have to be expended to rebuild in New Orleans and each family had to decide whether it was ultimately the right place for them, and whether they could go back and create a life there. Believe me, you will want to know what they decide.
Craig Donaldson and his wife, Alice, are a couple on the brink of losing it all. Their marriage, and the life in New Orleans which had once been a fulfilling and exciting adventure is crumbling slowly under the weight of festering anger and resentment, exacerbated by the changing visions each has for their family. Even as they are working on their marriage with a counselor, it is an exercise in force of will for them to communicate civilly with each other. Craig is satisfied with the life they have made in New Orleans, he loves the culture, his friends and the environment- he’s also happy enough in his position as editor of a local New Orleans Magazine. Fatigued by frequent hurricane evacuations, Alice is increasing stressed about the violence in the city, their quality of life and the safety of the couple’s two young children, Annie and Malcolm. Both families are at the edge and doing the best they can to hold it together when their lives are further devastated by Katrina.
I read Nine Lives: Life and Death in New Orleans, by Dan Baum earlier this year and I was blown away and spent weeks talking it up to my mom and my friends. So when Lisa from TLC Book Tours asked me if I would like to read City of Refuge by Tom Piazza I jumped at the opportunity to read more on the subject of New Orleans and Katrina, and then immediately started to worry that I wouldn’t like the book. Nine Lives is non-fiction, extremely well written, and shed so much light on the culture and workings of New Orleans, both before and after Katrina, that I would know immediately if City of Refuge wasn’t authentic. I worried that the fiction wouldn’t hold up to all my newly learned facts.
My fears were groundless because Tom Piazza gets it. He gets New Orleans, he gets fiction, and good dialogue, and intricate and conflicted characters, and lots of other things that made this a wonderfully touching and interesting book, which was very hard to put down. It was also grey! And I love grey in books because it means that I will talk to myself constantly about the characters and what is going on, and what they should have done, and how I love them but they are wrong, or hate them but have to admit that they are right- and I did that with this book right from the beginning! Every time I picked it up I was completely absorbed in the lives and heartaches of these families as they tried to find their way.
When a book is really good, sometimes there isn’t much that can be said without, I don’t know, gushing. This is book where the writing is wonderful, rich and intimate, as are the relationships between the characters. You will easily learn a lot about New Orleans’ colorful history and the politics and circumstances which made Katrina in particular so devastating, you will learn about the changing attitudes the people of this country had toward Katrina and the people of New Orleans, and frankly you will learn things that will have never occurred to you before because they are just not within your realm of experience.
I have never lived in a place afflicted by large storms, with 55 mph winds, that is in actuality beneath sea level. Who knew that if you can afford it that you book a hotel room outside of town for when you evacuate? It makes sense when you think about it, but the thought never occurred to me, and it’s what people have to do, sometimes several times a season. I’m not even sure if I would be able to swing that. I did know that you have to prepare your windows for when storms come, but who knew that you had to worry about someone stealing the piece of wood that you use to secure your window? That’s what happened to SJ and it’s probably happened to someone else too. There were a lot of little details like that, which contributed to making this story so real. I just loved it. So much work would have to be expended to rebuild in New Orleans and each family had to decide whether it was ultimately the right place for them, and whether they could go back and create a life there. Believe me, you will want to know what they decide.
nicmargan's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
informative
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
This book wasn’t perfect, but it was interesting in some of the many ways that books can be. I liked it as a historical document of New Orleans pre-Katrina; as an intermittent essay about the social issues that the disaster highlighted; and as an encapsulation of what makes New Orleans culture special.
Descriptions of the cultural richness of the city that was disrupted by the storm offered a lot to like that I didn’t know of beforehand. Accumulatively, I got the sense that one of the important things that makes New Orleans special is a love of having a good time.
There is so much to regret about this tragic disaster and while it’s hard to write fiction that hits specific, real-world issues, the author did a decent job. People who have had their lives disrupted by disasters may relate to having to move away from home indefinitely, being disappointed by the delivery of government promises, struggling to make sense of the disaster.
Beyond anything I understand are the massive death toll from Katrina, the devastating fact that the susceptibility of the levees to failure were predicted, and the scale (it was the largest exodus in the US since the dust bowl).
The story in the novel follows two protagonists.
One is a New Orleans-born black man named SJ. He’s a carpenter from the Ninth Ward. He deals with trauma from his experience in the army during the Vietnam war, as well as the heart-break of the loss of his wife. He must figure out how to fix himself up after the trauma of the disaster.
The second is a white man named Craig, the editor of an alternative news weekly. He’s an outsider to the city but discovering it has been the most life-giving experience he has ever had. After the disaster, he and his family move to Chicago. They must decide whether to return for the sake of the city, or remain outside for the sake of their family.
I thought the two narratives were mostly compelling. What I loved about the story was how the two character’s lives dovetailed at either end, which revealed certain things in contrast when you see them next to each other.
They make sense of the disaster by rebuilding their lives, knowing they're lucky to have them.
Descriptions of the cultural richness of the city that was disrupted by the storm offered a lot to like that I didn’t know of beforehand. Accumulatively, I got the sense that one of the important things that makes New Orleans special is a love of having a good time.
There is so much to regret about this tragic disaster and while it’s hard to write fiction that hits specific, real-world issues, the author did a decent job. People who have had their lives disrupted by disasters may relate to having to move away from home indefinitely, being disappointed by the delivery of government promises, struggling to make sense of the disaster.
Beyond anything I understand are the massive death toll from Katrina, the devastating fact that the susceptibility of the levees to failure were predicted, and the scale (it was the largest exodus in the US since the dust bowl).
The story in the novel follows two protagonists.
The second is a white man named Craig, the editor of an alternative news weekly. He’s an outsider to the city but discovering it has been the most life-giving experience he has ever had. After the disaster, he and his family move to Chicago. They must decide whether to return for the sake of the city, or remain outside for the sake of their family.
I thought the two narratives were mostly compelling. What I loved about the story was how the two character’s lives dovetailed at either end, which revealed certain things in contrast when you see them next to each other.
They make sense of the disaster by rebuilding their lives, knowing they're lucky to have them.
randybo5's review against another edition
4.0
The story of two families during Hurricane Katrina, one middle class family who is able to evacuate and a family from the Lower Ninth Ward. I thought even the cadence of the book helped us feel New Orleans.
kylalouis's review against another edition
4.0
Interesting, fictional portrayal of two families, one black, one white during Hurricane Katrina. The writing was descriptive and vivid and juxtaposition of the two families captured the tragedy of Katrina. I kept waiting for a bit more of a climax.
minvanwin's review against another edition
4.0
City of Refuge is Tom Piazza's passionate love letter to New Orleans. This story about how Hurricane Katrina affected two families--one white and middle class, one poor and black--is at turns heart- and gut-wrenching. Large chunks of the book read like narrative non-fiction: descriptions of the city, the levees, the damage, and media attention during the storm and its immediate aftermath, and diatribes about an ineffective and disorganized government response. The main white character seems largely autobiographical while the rest of the characters feel like composite portraits based on thousands of victims and evacuees. Certainly not a perfect book, but definitely worth reading.