Open City by Teju Cole
A young Nigerian doctor completing his residency walks aimlessly through the streets of Manhattan. The walks fulfil their need for Julius since they allow him to evaluate his relationships, his recent breakup with his fiancée, his present, and his past while escaping the highly regimented mental environment of work. Even if he is moving through the busiest parts of the city, the impact of innumerable faces doesn’t lessen his loneliness.
Open City by Teju Cole
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Julius travels across a variety of social landscapes as well, coming into contact with people from all backgrounds who can shed light on his voyage, which leads him to Brussels, his native Nigeria, and the most obscure corners of his own soul.
Teju Cole’s Open City, a melancholy tale about race, freedom, national identity, and surrender, is rife with insight. This book is a mature, profound work by an important new author who has much to say about our nation and our planet, written in a clear, rhythmic language that remains.
With his debut book, Teju Cole demonstrates great promise as he introduces us to Julius, a psychiatric resident, and his “meandering” across a post-9/11 New York City. Although we do see some of that, Cole catches more of New York by showing us the city through the perspective of this complex individual and his relationships with women, race, politics, and death. Cole used a lyrical writing style to portray unexpectedly intimate moments as well as periods of rage and violence. And while though the book is about New York City, some of its strongest writing—particularly the dialogue—occurs when Julius travels to Belgium in an effort to purportedly find his grandmother.
There he meets an Arab immigrant running a phone/internet cafe, and they have lively discussions about politics and religion both inside the store and over meals. “Open City” will appeal to readers who value subtlety and a slower pace, for people who prefer the calm of a beautiful Manhattan morning on a Sunday to the turmoil of rush hour on Monday at Grand Central Station or the subway station in Time Square.
This is an odd book that, by eschewing a happy ending, is undoubtedly true to life but not to traditional storytelling, and as a result, feels off or abrupt. The writing is insightful and evocative. The text has an intense and restricted emphasis because of the intimate first person point of view. The revelation at the conclusion is problematic despite the strong tone and voice created by this. The book discusses issues on the nature of truth, how our identities are formed, how those identities may differ from those of others, and what we choose to bury in order to live more comfortably.
