“There’s a lot of fake anger out there, masking dangerous fear. Daisy Fried gives us the real thing: anger born of despair, love, desire, injustice, and loss. She’s a grave robber, revivifying the corpse of Baudelaire to mess with him and help her to cope. His ghoulish presence accompanies her as she haunts Philadelphia, ‘that old worker,’ recording riots, suffering, stench. This book has killer atmosphere, fragrances fine and foul. It growls with the cavernous hunger of our ‘graveyard Nation’ mid-pandemic. But the calm center of The Year the City Emptied is Fried’s dying husband. Just try and read his last lucid words, swansong of a lost world, without choking up.”—Jennifer Moxley