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The Floating World
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The Floating World Hardcover - 2017

by C. Morgan Babst


From the publisher

"Set in New Orleans, this important and powerful novel follows the Boisdor family . . . in the months after Katrina. A profound, moving and authentically detailed picture of the storm's emotional impact on those who lived through it." --People In this dazzling debut about family, home, and grief, C. Morgan Babst takes readers into the heart of Hurricane Katrina and the life of a great city. As the storm is fast approaching the Louisiana coast, Cora Boisdor refuses to leave the city. Her parents, Joe Boisdor, an artist descended from freed slaves who became the city's preeminent furniture makers, and his white "Uptown" wife, Dr. Tess Eshleman, are forced to evacuate without her, setting off a chain of events that leaves their marriage in shambles and Cora catatonic--the victim or perpetrator of some violence mysterious even to herself. This mystery is at the center of Babst's haunting and profound novel. Cora's sister, Del, returns to New Orleans from the successful life she built in New York City to find her hometown in ruins and her family deeply alienated from one another. As Del attempts to figure out what happened to her sister, she must also reckon with the racial history of the city and the trauma of a disaster that was not, in fact, some random act of God but an avoidable tragedy visited on New Orleans's most vulnerable citizens. Separately and together, each member of the Boisdor clan must find the strength to remake home in a city forever changed. The Floating World is the Katrina story that needed to be told--one with a piercing, unforgettable loveliness and a vivid, intimate understanding of this particular place and its tangled past.

From the rear cover

"This powerful, important novel . . . is New Orleans to the bone, an authentic, detailed picture of the physical and emotional geography of the city, before, during, and after the tragedy, its social strata, its racial complications, the zillion cultural details that define its character . . . Deeply felt and beautifully written; a major addition to the literature of Katrina." --Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"The Floating World is a thought-provoking story of class and race and trauma, told through the dramatic prism of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. Babst's sentences are so fresh and alive they leap off the page. This is a beautiful and captivating book." --Jessica Shattuck, New York Times bestselling author of The Women in the Castle

"This book is an achingly precise diagram of a city and family in heartbreak. Babst's writing is fluid and insidious and hauntingly beautiful. The Boisdorés join some of the great families of American fiction, fascinating kinfolk through whom we watch the rise and fall and rise of New Orleans." --Kaitlyn Greenidge, author of We Love You, Charlie Freeman

"In powerfully lyrical prose, Morgan Babst evokes the shattered lives strewn in the wake of the levee collapses that left New Orleans in ruins. It's a story still difficult to believe--even by those of us who lived through it." --John Biguenet, author of The Rising Water Trilogy

"This is a rich and powerful novel, satisfying on many levels--wry, eloquent, passionate, and completely memorable." --Valerie Martin, author of Property and The Ghost of Mary Celeste

"This powerful and lyrical novel captures the emotional currents in New Orleans after Katrina. With an authentic and sensitive voice, Morgan Babst explores family, race, class, and the essence of disruption." --Walter Isaacson, bestselling author of Steve Jobs

Details

  • Title The Floating World
  • Author C. Morgan Babst
  • Binding Hardcover
  • Edition First Edition
  • Pages 384
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Algonquin Books, Chapel Hill
  • Date 2017-10
  • ISBN 9781616205287 / 1616205288
  • Weight 1.3 lbs (0.59 kg)
  • Dimensions 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.5 in (23.11 x 15.75 x 3.81 cm)
  • Themes
    • Topical: Family
  • Library of Congress subjects New Orleans (La.), Hurricane Katrina, 2005
  • Library of Congress Catalog Number 2017020400
  • Dewey Decimal Code 813.6

Media reviews

Citations

  • Booklist, 09/01/2017, Page 44
  • BookPage, 11/01/2017, Page 0
  • Foreword, 09/26/2017, Page 0
  • Kirkus Reviews, 08/15/2017, Page 75
  • Library Journal, 08/01/2017, Page 76
  • Library Journal Prepub Alert, 06/15/2017, Page 57
  • Publishers Weekly, 08/14/2017, Page 0
  • Shelf Awareness, 11/07/2017, Page 0

About the author

C. Morgan Babst studied writing at NOCCA, Yale, and NYU. Her essays and short fiction have appeared in such journals as the Oxford American, Guernica, the Harvard Review, LitHub, and the New Orleans Review, and her piece "Death Is a Way to Be" was honored as a Notable Essay in Best American Essays 2016. She evacuated New Orleans one day before Hurricane Katrina made landfall. After eleven years in New York, she now lives in New Orleans with her husband and child.
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