Sometimes it's a little fun to celebrate ourselves for doing something relatively normal, like staying in NYC during the pandemic. I really enjoyed the stories highlighted in this book, but I found the points hammered home a bit repetitive. Like we get it, many of us who read this were there!! Yay us!!

This book is well-written and entertaining. However, I found myself not really sympathizing with the author. He seemed to be patting himself and others on the back but I am not really sure for what. I confess I did not finish it as it really seemed to not be progressing after the first 40% or so...

"What happens when an entire social class abandons a metropolis? This genre-bending journey through lockdown New York offers an exhilarating, intimate look at a city returned to its rebellious spirit."

Feral City is an incredible book. On its face it's the story of how life changed in New York City as the pandemic unfurled in 2020, when residents with wealth and resources left the city to spend lockdown in more picturesque locales or in the suburbs from which they came. Left behind were the people without the resources to abscond to Vermont or Tulum or the Midwestern suburbs, and the people who would never leave their beloved city: the "true" New Yorkers. But at its core, Feral City is a deep exploration of the impact of gentrification, viewed through socioeconomic and sociopolitical lenses, filtered through queer theory and psychoanalytical frameworks. I will absolutely be buying a physical copy for my personal library. Many thanks to NetGalley and W. W. Norton and Company for the opportunity to have read this book.

I ended up reading through this way quicker than I was expecting, which is one of the highest compliments I can give to a book. I can pin that to Moss' writing style - which, if you know Vanishing New York, will be incredibly familiar - shuttles rapidly between academic analysis of the things happening around him, lyrical odes to the protests and their leaders, and the sheer joy you can hear as Moss tells us how gentrification temporarily recedes, and weird New York is the dominant culture like it used to be. From this point in 2022, you hope with him but know what's ultimately coming as he relates how deBlasio backs gentrification with emphasis and the police start homogenization to bring back the gentrifiers and the tourists. I was back in NYC for a weekend recently, and you can still see and feel bits of the pandemic NY that Moss relates here, and it gives you hope for the future. Definitely pick this up this fall; you're in for a treat.

Jeremiah Moss, a self-defined transsexual and also a psychoanalyst, has written a detailed account of the COVID lockdown year-and-a-half- especially the year 2020- in lower Manhattan. He begins with vividly describing his life in the East Village pre-Pandemic. He introduces the New People- people who have come to NYC from other places and have no real connection to the City itself, using it as another experience they have for awhile and then move on.

Once Lockdown happens, the New People leave to other places where they feel safer. And then the New Yorkers, the ones who have identified with the city and have no place else to go (or would want to), own the city. It's a jubilant time for Moss and his chosen family, many of them street people who rejoice in the lack of structure during a time when everyone is confused.

He chronicles the uprisings- the influx of police to try to shut down the noise of joy, The parades and protests, The vivid presence of the BLM movement and constant violent interactions with cops. The City trying to restore order in order to open up again to commerce and tourism, to "return to normal". Only there is no normal.
Thanks to NetGalley and Edelweiss Plus for the eARC.