Open City in Around the World

Apr 12, 2015 Jenny (Reading Envy) rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: read2015, open-book, reread

Read this again because I will go see the author speak on Wednesday. Still really love the walking bits and get a little distracted in the other bits. Cole's writing about music is stunning as well. His writing is fluid, and I'm looking forward to what comes next. ...more

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Feb 09, 2012 Friederike Knabe rated it really liked it

Shelves: african-lit

"New York City worked itself into my life at walking pace..." This reads like an invitation to join an exploration of the place, its sounds and atmospheres, seen through the eyes of Julius, narrator of Teju Cole's debut novel, OPEN CITY. And it is! Julius is a German-Nigerian immigrant and works as a resident doctor in a NYC psychiatric clinic. As we follow him, meandering - initially aimlessly - through the streets in his neighbourhood and beyond, our eyes and minds are opened to much more than "New York City worked itself into my life at walking pace..." This reads like an invitation to join an exploration of the place, its sounds and atmospheres, seen through the eyes of Julius, narrator of Teju Cole's debut novel, OPEN CITY. And it is! Julius is a German-Nigerian immigrant and works as a resident doctor in a NYC psychiatric clinic. As we follow him, meandering - initially aimlessly - through the streets in his neighbourhood and beyond, our eyes and minds are opened to much more than the sidewalks, the brownstones, the parks and other vistas passing by at walking pace... "Each neighbourhood of the city appeared to be made of a different substance, each seemed to have a different air pressure, a different psychic weight..." muses Julius as he lies in bed at night, organizing what he has seen during his walk,"until the forms began to morph into each other and assume abstract shapes unrelated to the real city". At times, Julius describes his environment with photographic clarity and precision, at others he blurs his vision, and looking into his own "mind's eye", delves deep into thought and memory: reflecting on historical events, his personal life, music, philosophy, literature and politics...". What evolves as we are drawn deeper and deeper into the narration and the narrator's mind is much more than another "stream-of-consciousness" story or another literary introduction to New York City and some of its illustrious people... Cole's book is a compelling example of "memory and reality merging into one": part city portrait, real and imagined, part journey into history and personal life, fused with insightful recollections on people he encounters and their perspectives on life in all its facets.

It may be his professional training and/or his personal history - growing up in Nigeria in a bi-racial family - Julius appears to always maintain his reserve and detachment, looking at his environment through the lens of the outsider. Somebody calls him a "journeyer", a "visionary", someone who "has traveled far". And he has, of course. His reflections on the aftermath of the destruction of the WTC or his discussion of the situation in the Middle East with Farouq, a North African immigrant in Brussels, are remarkable as they are affecting. But he is also a loner; having lost one girlfriend, he longs for another, no longer "available". He comes closest in his personal relations to his old professor, Dr. Saito. Yet, he is also restless, facing "this constant struggle to modulate the internal environment, this endless being tossed about like a cloud." While he is good at discovering the hidden stories in others, his own secret, if that is what it was, remains a mystery, caught between fact and fiction.

Teju Cole's book is exquisitely written, descriptive and imaginative: brilliant in many ways. But don't look for plot or straight forward narration. Go with the flow of the walks, and you get carried by their rhythms. Cole is also a professional photographer and one could easily imagine photographs inserted into the text, à la W.G. Sebald. There are other parallels Between OPEN CITY and Sebald's genre-transcending novels. Do you need to know NYC to enjoy the walks with Julius? Not really, although, having walked along some of the streets and places, I feel motivated to return, book in hand. ...more

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Feb 09, 2011 Marieke rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2013, great-african-reads-book-club, united-states, fiction

4.5 stars, really...two things kept it from being five for me: a scene with Moji towards the end of the book that wasn't convincing to me and the ending itself--it left me feeling unsatisfied. I'm still thinking about it, though.

Cole's prose is beautiful and easy to read...it's melancholic and meditative. The narrator seems to be an outsider observing everything around him, yet the reader never quite knows what he thinks, what he really thinks, or how he is really experiencing much of what he te 4.5 stars, really...two things kept it from being five for me: a scene with Moji towards the end of the book that wasn't convincing to me and the ending itself--it left me feeling unsatisfied. I'm still thinking about it, though.

Cole's prose is beautiful and easy to read...it's melancholic and meditative. The narrator seems to be an outsider observing everything around him, yet the reader never quite knows what he thinks, what he really thinks, or how he is really experiencing much of what he tells us. Through a series of walks in New York City and Brussels, the narrator reflects and remembers, allowing the reader to pick up on the threads of his life. One major theme I especially enjoyed was that of identity for people outside the majority, especially immigrants, whether in the U.S. or Europe. The narrator never once truly engaged any of his conversation partners with personal details, which I thought was an interesting choice on Cole's part...the reader knows that the narrator has an interesting perspective as a person with mixed German and Nigerian parentage, as well as that of a non-white immigrant to the U.S., but some of the people he engages in conversation know none of this about him...or rather, they know only that he grew up in Nigeria. The reader moves in and out of the periphery, experiencing the narrator's perspective at times, and then moving back to observe the narrator. At least this is how i experienced this book.

The melancholic, meditative mood of the book was also punctuated with foreboding for me...i felt the buildup to events and situations that i expected to have a profound emotional impact on the narrator. These often felt like a bit of a punch to the gut, but perplexing as well, because I never quite knew how the narrator processed these events once they happened. One sentence at the end of the book really captured this sense for me: Nevertheless, the sense persisted that something more troubling was at work.

And so I'll leave it at that for now. ...more

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Dec 01, 2011 Jenny (Reading Envy) rated it really liked it

Shelves: read2012, location-usa-ny

I have never been to New York, but feel as if I've seen a version of it through the eyes of Julius as he walks, reflects, and wonders. He isn't just a flâneur; his upbringing in Nigeria and navigating multiple languages and countries of origin, as well as his love of music and reading, along with his work as a psychiatrist give him plenty to think about.

Frankly, I'm not surprised at all that it was in the top ten books of 2011.

"No sooner do I buy a new book than it reproaches me for leaving it ...more

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Feb 01, 2015 Lydia rated it really liked it

To my surprise, this book was a pleasure to read, and I savored it. Don't ordinarily love the genre: there's little plot, there's a lot of rumination and meditation on ordinary things, and our narrator is somewhat of a snob and closed off from people even as he wanders through the streets of New York. But there are episodes of deep human experience, empathy, and pathos that bring the book to life. ...more

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