The City Where We Once Lived, Eric Barnes
The City Where We Once Lived, Eric Barnes
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The City Where We Once Lived

Author: Eric Barnes

Narrator: Patrick Lawlor

Unabridged: 8 hr 15 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download (DRM Protected)

Published: 04/03/2018


Synopsis

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. With glowing 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.

About Eric Barnes

Eric Barnes is the author of two previous novels, Shimmer and Something Pretty, Something Beautiful. He has published more than forty short stories in Prairie Schooner, North American Review, The Literary Review, Best American Mystery Stories, and other publications. By day, he is publisher of newspapers in Memphis, Nashville, Knoxville, and Chattanooga that cover business, politics, the arts, and more. On Fridays, he hosts a news talk show on his local PBS station. In the past, he was a reporter and editor in Connecticut and New York. Years ago he drove a forklift in Tacoma, Washington, and then Kenai, Alaska, worked construction on Puget Sound, and, many years ago, he graduated from the MFA writing program at Columbia University. He lives in Memphis, Tennessee.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Viva on January 27, 2018

Low key, bland, slow, depressing and pointless. I think the author did a great job of setting up the background. I really felt as if I lived in the North End itself and lived a pointless life like one of the inhabitants. However, I think the author could have done a better job of making me intereste......more

Goodreads review by Susan on December 10, 2020

Well, I liked it enough to finish it. It's a rather leisurely read, with information about the nameless main character and the place where he lives being leaked out bit by bit until we finally get enough information to get a sense of the place and a limited understanding of the people who live there......more

Goodreads review by Stewart on January 10, 2024

Full disclosure: I won a free autographed copy of this book in a Goodreads giveaway. Our unnamed narrator lives in the North End district of an unspecified city. It's sometime in the future, presumably the near future since none of tech mentioned is noticeably different from our present day (2024, a......more

Goodreads review by Shawn on July 01, 2018

For what this is, it's actually pretty stellar. It's an exhausting, depressing read. We're pulled into a solitary and slow world and we feel every inch of it. That, in itself, is proof of the author's abilities. This is the type of book that will force you to dig deep inside yourself and really analy......more

Goodreads review by Elrik on April 25, 2018

Every once in a while there is one of these books which touches you, deeply... This was the case for me with this one. I am usually a fan of fast-paced or at least stringent storytelling, and this one started for me a little too slow, a little too... literary (meaning above the standard prose and lan......more