A review by ielerol
Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead by Sara Gran
I truly don't know how I feel about this book. It's well-written and well-constructed, Claire is an asshole but an interesting kind of an asshole. But, I'm not much of a mystery reader, and this book feels like it is very written For Mystery Fans. All the quotes from Détection are mystical bullshit about the profundity of mysteries and detection, and they have the shape of something that should be meaningful but then I start asking like, ok, how does this translate into actually working as a detective? How does it help you actually accomplish anything? And it doesn't, because it doesn't actually mean anything. Certainly Claire never seems to concretely take an action based on it, beyond, I guess, ignore all the standard procedures a normal investigator would take in favor of wandering around and taking drugs with strangers. And maybe if I thought there was something profound and mystical about Mysteries as a concept, I would care? But I don't. A mystery is just information you don't know, and then maybe you learn something new, and then you know. This is an extremely ordinary experience. I solve the Case of Where Did I Put My Coffee Mug at least once a week.
Basically I feel the same way about Silette as I do about the I Ching, which Claire also consults regularly. It's not information, it's just a prompt you could use to think about the information you already know in a different way. Which is fine, probably, I just think the I Ching is a little more honest about it, in addition to being a real thing with a lot of actually interesting cultural context and history.
The other thing that makes me uneasy is the portrayal of New Orleans. I mean, obviously Hurricane Katrina was devastating, and New Orleans does have a lot of poverty, and a lot of suffering. As far as I know, the things the book says about crime there are true. And all things considered, the portrayals of the poor residents of New Orleans in this book are fairly sympathetic. I just...felt uneasy about the singular focus on crime and poverty, as if those are the only things worth knowing about it. There was maybe an attempt to show a little more of the city with the musicians and Mardi Gras krewes, but that's only slightly better, because like, Mardi Gras is pretty much the only thing people already know about New Orleans anyway. Also, at one point Claire looks at one of the traumatized, struggling young men she interacts with, and thinks about what his life could have been like if he had been born "anywhere else" and I thought, what? Excuse me? Is there a city in the US that doesn't profoundly fail its Black children? Sure, there are probably places where you have a better shot at success if you're born middle class and Black, and a few places where you have a better chance of being born middle class and Black in the first place, but I promise that being poor and Black and suffering in the foster care system is not remotely unique to New Orleans. Perhaps I would just rather see the city through the eyes of someone who seemed to hate it (and herself) a bit less.
Basically I feel the same way about Silette as I do about the I Ching, which Claire also consults regularly. It's not information, it's just a prompt you could use to think about the information you already know in a different way. Which is fine, probably, I just think the I Ching is a little more honest about it, in addition to being a real thing with a lot of actually interesting cultural context and history.
The other thing that makes me uneasy is the portrayal of New Orleans. I mean, obviously Hurricane Katrina was devastating, and New Orleans does have a lot of poverty, and a lot of suffering. As far as I know, the things the book says about crime there are true. And all things considered, the portrayals of the poor residents of New Orleans in this book are fairly sympathetic. I just...felt uneasy about the singular focus on crime and poverty, as if those are the only things worth knowing about it. There was maybe an attempt to show a little more of the city with the musicians and Mardi Gras krewes, but that's only slightly better, because like, Mardi Gras is pretty much the only thing people already know about New Orleans anyway. Also, at one point Claire looks at one of the traumatized, struggling young men she interacts with, and thinks about what his life could have been like if he had been born "anywhere else" and I thought, what? Excuse me? Is there a city in the US that doesn't profoundly fail its Black children? Sure, there are probably places where you have a better shot at success if you're born middle class and Black, and a few places where you have a better chance of being born middle class and Black in the first place, but I promise that being poor and Black and suffering in the foster care system is not remotely unique to New Orleans. Perhaps I would just rather see the city through the eyes of someone who seemed to hate it (and herself) a bit less.