Babylon Rolling [Paperback]

It is no mean feat for a fiction writer to own characters of varied cultural identities, each adding personal nuance to a helter-skelter patchwork of personalities that make up Orchid Street in New Orleans, from a transplanted Minneapolis family to new East Indian neighbors to the mixture of black and white families that make up an eclectic, low-key neighborhood, including a local bar, the Tokyo Rose. Boyden frames her cast with a deft touch, defining subtle differences and similarities as they interact, beginning in the summer of 2004, through the threat of Hurricane Ivan, the Katrina disaster just over the horizon for these unsuspecting folks. Orchid Street is pure New Orleans, a city of divergent tastes and interests with a big heart and a penchant for celebration. Here the slightly more affluent reside near the less fortunate, sidewalk barbeques drawing people from their homes, the summer heat, ice-cold beer and the easy camaraderie of life old and new, always in transition. Everybody has their problems; life is tough, but they look out for one another when the occasion calls for it.

With a tough-talking, street wise Richard Wright style of narrative, Boyden takes no prisoners, her protagonists explicitly defined: Ed and Ariel, he a Buddhist househusband, she the general manager of a French Quarter hotel, La Belle Nouvelle, catering to a clientele of edgy rappers and their outrageous entourages; the elderly neighborhood fixtures, Roy and Cerise Brown, a couple of great generosity and kindness, Roy often setting up his barbeque for the neighbors, Cerise preparing her spicy fare; Philomenia (Prancie) Beauregard de Bruges and her cancer-riddled husband, Joe, she with a plan to alter the serenity of Orchid Street with an excessive bounty of food, he languishing in a dark bedroom awaiting the end; the Gupta's, the newest folks on the block, Indira in her brilliant saris, the mild-mannered Ganesh taking everything, including Ivan, in stride; Sharon Harris and her excitable brood, a gaggle of grandbabies overflowing the ramshackle dwelling; and Sharon's son, Daniel, street name Fearius, a young man with gangsta ambitions, running drugs and desperately building up street cred, recently graduated from box cutter to gun.

From the opening chapter, when we meet the misguided Fearius, it is clear that trouble is brewing, that each home on Orchid Street hides its own problems and heartaches; all of these people will interact until a bloody resolution. What will be the catalyst and who will be left standing, lives still intact? Boyden fully inhabits these characters, moving seamlessly from one to another, always aware of the family challenges and the cultural pressures that cause a young man with no future to exceed the boundaries of reason. Small dramas inform the plot, from marital infidelity to the unbalanced, slow-burning rage of a disturbed woman, good intentions overriding the most egregious behavior of a few. A freak accident, the threat of a hurricane and various family disturbances build an atmosphere of inevitability to this taut tale, but the author remains firmly in control, her multi-faceted, all-too-human characters familiar and accessible, pre-Katrina. The future devastation of Katrina looms over Orchid Street, a microcosm of this quintessential American city. A great spirit drives this place, indomitable in the face of nature's destruction, and of man's. Luan Gaines/ 2008.

I bought it because I'm a New Orleans native and because it was well received here at Amazon. But as lovely as some of the prose could be, there was just something off key with the story, with its tone, and especially with the dialogue and monologues. At times, I felt that the source material was right out of the HBO series 'The Wire', down to the idea that a black kid out of juvey with drug lord aspirations thinks in terms of chess moves or calls his drugs "the product." Baltimore maybe. New Orleans no way. There is an insane upper crust white woman who keeps a journal filled with sarcastic misobservations of her neighbors a la 'Notes on a Scandal.' These things jar the narrative for me. But what I find most peculiar is the absence of certain standard colloquialisms, particularly those used in the black community and across all wards, that are absolutely missing in this book which is supposed to be a character study of New Orleans. There are certain sayings and expressions a New Orleanian would know without necessarily having much to do with the black community, things a writer with an interested ear would pick up online at the grocery. They are not in the novel at all. How is this possible? On the other hand, the novel consistently uses a vernacular that is not at all particular to New Orleans. It's distracting. [Ok, hol' on an listen up: I been livbin' in New Orleans my hol' life an I ain' neber heard no one talkin' 'bout how they "best do this" or they "best done that", especially no black folks.] The author is a former trapeze artist, a career which has been used as an analogy for her writing gifts. But I think it is also an appropriate analogy for her writing weaknesses: she is flying so high above her subject that she is slightly out of earshot and slightly out of view of the real city. Another problem I have is the author's uneven tone--is it satire, is it irony? I don't know. Out of the entire cast, I felt empathy for only one character and frankly none for the city at all. I guess all the tragedy I've personally witnessed and continue to witness since Katrina makes me sensitive about a writer approaching New Orleans without a truly vested emotional commitment to it. I don't know. I just didn't feel it here. Still, this is a book that can be finished in a day or two; it is interesting and there are patches of beautiful writing throughout, so for a light read I would recommend it. But only for a light read.

I can think of perhaps five other books that so consumed my days and then kept me up at night by lamplight. And I can think of no other novel that so beautifully renders in the reader's imagination the city of New Orleans.

Amanda Boyden accomplishes no easy feat in this novel. The novel is told in five distinct voices, and I found myself rooting for and then against and then, once again, for the five protagonists at various points in the story. The characters are incredibly complex. Like anybody else, they are flawed, but they are not without their redemptive merits. And, as Hurricane Katrina gathers force in the Gulf and the book comes to a heartbreaking climax--well, I won't ruin the ending, but I will say that this book will stick with you long after you've put it down (and, if you're reading experience was anything like mine, you'll finish the book about two days after you first picked it up).

My highest possible recommendation.

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 11 reviews  4.5 out of 5 stars