Books about New Orleans

[katestine]

Originally I was going to lump these books in with my quest for a great Southern novel, but realized they would make their own post. And, I'd argue that New Orleans is different from The South.

I started New Orleans, Mon Amour a few years ago, possibly before my first visit. At the time, it sounded too hokey, like the Donna Leon books about Venice

Comments

[etcet]

Funny story about Pho in New Orleans - there is a really big, intense Vietnamese population (or, at least, there was before Katrina; I haven't had a chance to get back since moving away) - and I would literally get it for lunch every day, because it was on the boss' dime as a business tax write-off "lunch meeting" and the place around the corner was just fantastic. and the spring rolls - both fresh and fried - were excellent. there were probably other things on the menu, but after a while, we never even got menus, the owner would just say hello and ask us how many spring rolls we wanted (ie: whether i was getting my own order in addition to the ones to share) and how big a bowl each of us wanted. :-)

I can get pho here, not quite as good, but can't get crawdads or do a boil, which are the regional foods I miss most. good andoulle sausage here, at least.

[thewronghands]

There still is, particularly in New Orleans East.

[katestine]

Oh, Sara Roahen talks about going to New Orleans East for phở: I understand why it gets a chapter, but it doesn't ping as New Orleans for me, possibly because we don't have family there and I've never gone with my mother (who eats Chinese and Vietnamese food everywhere she goes, from Houston to Vancouver, London to Mumbai).

Crawdads only seem worth eating if someone else cooks them, someone else cleans after, and there's company to entertain me while I fail to efficiently get food.

[mallorys_camera]

Actually, some of the best New Orleans novels I've read are the erstwhile Poppy Z. Brite's "Liquor" series, which are set in the Big Easy restaurant world. Poppy -- now Billy Martin -- was married to an up-and-coming New Orleans chef, and she -- now he -- was an amazing writer. (Alas! Billy no longer writes.)

They're very, very hard to track down, but you might be able to find them in eBook format. I think you might like them.

[katestine]

You weren't kidding about hard to track down.

Can't seem to get a copy of Liquor easily: will I be very sad if I start with Second Line or Soul Kitchen?

[mallorys_camera]

Better to start with Liquor.

[katestine]

I cannot tell you how much I enjoyed these books: I inhaled them.

[thewronghands]

Did I recommend the Benjamin January mysteries to you? Set in pre-Civil-War New Orleans, mostly, though the later ones in the series explore other parts of the world. Barbara Hambly, the first one's "A Free Man of Color". Thoughtful exploration of the complexities of race and culture and what that meant for folks living there at the time.

Ugh, A Confederacy of Dunces. I just have no interest in reading books where there aren't any characters I like and can root for, regardless of how bitingly satirical they are.

[katestine]

Oh! I wish you had, because it sounds like the perfect counterpoint to my last New Orleans book dump. I actually have considered reading Herbert Asbury's French Quarter and The Strange History of the American Quadroon: this sounds like a better fit for my curiosity.

[katestine]

A Free Man of Color is one of the greatest book recommendations I've ever received. Thank you. It is =exactly= what I wanted to read, touching on race and class at the exact period I was curious about, in a format I often read (mystery), well-written, with 12 more books in the series. Awesome. The only thing I don't like is how awful are the things that happen in the book, which um, might be accurate. And also keeps me from reading too fast! (because there's only so much danger I can stand for the hero to be in per day.)

[thewronghands]

Ha! I win at book recommending! [grin] I'm glad you like it as much as I do; it's one of my all-time favorite series.

I hesitate to recommend books that I'm only halfway through myself, but if you want something about the same period that's fully factual, I am 200 pages in to Intimate Enemies, which is *magnificent* so far. Down side: it is horrible in parts, and there are dead babies. (They don't get a lot of coverage, but pretty much any factual book about that time period that focuses on family life and law is going to have some. The titular Baroness has five children in her marriage, three of whom make it out of infancy.) Good side: thorough background of New Orleans further back than I had read in detail, which finally made clear to me the intersections and cultural tensions between the French New Orleans government to the Spanish-Creole government back to France and then finally Louisiana Purchased into America. Aha! One side of the heroine's family (her family by blood) were Spanish nobility, the other (her family