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In a near future where climate change has severely affected weather and agriculture, the North End of an unnamed city has long been abandoned in favor of the neighboring South End. Aside from the scavengers steadily stripping the empty city to its bones, only a few thousand people remain, content to live quietly among the crumbling metropolis. Many, like the narrator, are there to try to escape the demons of their past. He spends his time observing and recording the decay around him, attempting to bury memories of what he has lost.
But it eventually becomes clear that things are unraveling elsewhere as well, as strangers, violent and desperate alike, begin to appear in the North End, spreading word of social and political deterioration in the South End and beyond. Faced with a growing disruption to his isolated life, the narrator discovers within himself a surprising need to resist losing the home he has created in this empty place. He and the rest of the citizens of the North End must choose whether to face outsiders as invaders or welcome them as neighbors.
The City Where We Once Lived is a haunting novel of the near future that combines a prescient look at how climate change and industrial flight will shape our world with a deeply personal story of one man running from his past. In lean, spare prose, Eric Barnes brings into sharp focus questions of how we come to call a place home and what is our capacity for violence when that home becomes threatened.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
April 3, 2018 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9781628728842
- File size: 682 KB
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9781628728842
- File size: 682 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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February 15, 2018
The sparse and deserted North End of the city was once an urban, bustling landscape. Budget cuts, extreme weather, and a governmental shift in focus to the South End led to the North End's abandonment. People survive in this area because government-mandated electricity and water still run. Some people have set up shop on street corners. The garbage man takes tips. The hyper-local-focused newspaper publishes hundreds of copies that people actually read. Scavengers clearing remaining buildings of raw materials always ask newcomers: "What is your capacity for violence?" A woman from the South End goes missing. A tornado causes massive damage. South End teens rob North End residents. Levees are breaking, threatening city-wide flooding. The metropolitan commission doesn't care about the trouble because taxes aren't being paid. So, North End residents decide to organize. VERDICT Barnes's (Shimmer) violent, haunted, and creepy novel about failing societies will attract readers of dark, postapocalyptic fiction.--Michelle Gilbert Doshi, Lake Forest Lib., IL
Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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