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Those Other People

de Mary King O'Donnell

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First published in 1946, Those Other People is a wonderful and unjustly forgotten novel about people living in close proximity on a block of St. Philips Street, at the back end of New Orleans' French Quarter. The story takes place during the days between the beginning of World War 2 and the U.S. entry into the war. Occasionally we get references to headlines featuring Hitler and Mussolini, and we're also told of Nazi troops shooting down students in the streets of Prague. Those references provide chronological and cultural cues, but they're not what the story is about. Instead, O'Donnell gives us a day in the life of an ethnically mixed but eternally interacting cast of characters. Although she was writing about the French Quarter she knew, for us it's a trip back in time to the days when the French Quarter, and especially towards its back end (closer to Esplanade and further from Canal Street and the Quarter's tourist center) was still an ethnically mixed working class neighborhood. One character builds skiffs in his workshop; another has a small auto body shop. Rubbing elbows with each other daily are an immigrant Italian couple, a Filipino family, a black couple, and a white Protestant family, including realtor Merlin Webster (who owns most the this property) and his wife, as well as Merlin's unmarried sister Leah and their younger sister, Maudie. Maudie is married to Victor Peralta, employed as a writer by the WPA. His elderly mother lives with them, as well. Other strangers are brought into the narrative along the way, as O'Donnell's lens moves gracefully if somewhat fitfully around the city.

If the story has a moral center, it is Leah. Leah wakes up as on the day of our story deciding to go in search of Joe, a merchant marine she met in a bar two nights prior and with whom she spent all that night talking. Upon the sunrise, Joe had simply said goodbye and walked off down the street. Leah knows that finding him, somewhere in the city within the two days before he's due to ship out, is highly improbable, but she decides that the search alone will somehow revitalize her, and so she begins her odyssey, though this is just one of the many strands of O'Donnell's story.

An important strength of O'Donnell's writing his her ability to capture the physical details of the Quarter: buildings, flowers, people, weather, and the play of sunlight as the day progresses. The musings of the characters, their aspirations, frustrations and resignations, whether fretful or at peace, bring this novel its real depth. O'Donnell is also clear about the effects of the many class distinctions between the characters, and gives particular attention to the difficulties and injustices visited upon her black characters, from their economic problems to the cavalier attitude of policeman who, in search of a store thief they know to be a young black man, are content to, essentially, arrest the first black youth they see when they come around the corner.

Here is an example of that last element, and of the quality of the writing in general. The black couple, Dan and Iris, and their friend Orena, are at home. Trouble has come to the Clarks in a way that both threatens their immediate future and stirs up memory of tragedy past:

"Dan and Iris Clark sat at the table in the Clark kitchen with Orena Robideaux. Dan was finishing his interrupted meal, but Iris could not eat. She picked at a thread on the checkered tablecloth. Orena stood up to make a fresh pot of core.

Rain pounded the courtyard bricks; water hissed on the bottom of the kettle Orena had filled and set on the stove; Dan's knife clattered against his plate. Nobody spoke, but the room spoke for them. It was as clean as Iris could keep it; but soap and scouring powder could not erase memories of black sweat and weatherbeaten walls and greasy meals scooped up in haste; beds sought in haste, anywhere, to ease the ache of limbs and heart and loins; beds left in haste to begin the endless work of endless mornings they were made to love and so could not help but love in spite of knowing that the day's work would lead them nowhere except to bed again in a land which was theirs and not theirs, in a house they did not own. And yet, Iris thought, this was her kitchen."

Overall, though, this is a very good-hearted book. The positive energy of life thrums through O'Donnell's writing, and the familiarity between the myriad people jammed up against each other on our block of St. Philips Street breeds friendship and forbearance rather than contempt. The book's flaw, such as it is, is an over-romanticized view. So I wouldn't call this a gritty novel by any stretch, but I did very much enjoy it. ( )
1 vota rocketjk | Dec 14, 2023 |
Have not read this book for years but just remember that it made me a little uncomfortable...only reason for 3 stars because I can't remember anything else ( )
  beadsthat | Feb 8, 2009 |
A good story set in New Orleans in the 1940s. A woman searches for a sailor with whom she has fallen in love. As well as being a fun novel and a glimpse of New Orleans, the author also makes some statements on racism, individuality, the role of women, and religion. ( )
1 vota Sleepy_Head | Nov 2, 2007 |
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