Reviews with content warning for Racism - Open City

Reviews tagging 'Racism'

reidfrancis's review against another edition

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reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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leselina's review against another edition

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challenging dark reflective tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.25

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allisonmspiers's review

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reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

1.5

If I didn't have to read it for a class, I probably would have DNFed Open City around page 30 and saved myself a lot of pain. But, alas. Here we are.

To begin, I want to say that I really, REALLY wanted to like this book. Between the accolades, the young, Nigerian author, the setting (I'm doing an internship in New York this summer, and I read this book as an introduction to that experience), I was so excited to pick this up. Not to mention that the prose is really beautiful from the get-go. Cole is supremely talented at the sentence level—hence the extra half-star.

But as I delved into Open City, two things happened. First, I got bored. SOOOOOO bored. And then I became infuriated.

I am not a huge proponent of the plot-driven novel, and can absolutely get behind a book that focuses entirely on characterization, especially when the writer can command a sentence in the way that Cole can. But I was disappointed to discover that this novel is lacking in both plot AND interesting characters. The story in a nutshell is this: Julius, the narrator, wanders around New York aimlessly, *thinking,* stream-of-consciousness style. And let me tell you, not all of his thoughts were winners. The man cannot go into a grocery store without pondering the internal lives of the grapes in the produce aisle or having a life-changing conversation with a random person on the street about metaphysics. The dialogue felt canned and did not resemble any real-life conversation I have ever heard. He also describes. every. single. tiny. detail. in a way that does not seem to serve any real purpose in the grand scope of the story (i.e. thematically, tonally). These descriptions are very eloquently written, but mind-numbing to read in terms of their content. Julius MUST tell us EXACTLY what streets he's walking on, and how those streets lead to these specific other streets, which go in this direction, and then there's this street, and OH LOOK, a pigeon! Oh, and here are some stairs! Let's describe those for six paragraphs... you get the idea.

But even if this book is less exciting than staring at a wall, I would have given it two or three stars for the strength of the prose alone. My issue is that I also found it to be a problematic and irresponsible representation of SA. I quite literally had to pause after every single sentence in the final chapters to temper my rage so that I wouldn't spontaneously combust.

If this rave review has convinced you that you really, really want to read this not-novel novel, I will warn you that there are spoilers ahead. Also, TW for SA.

In Chapter 20 (very near the end of the novel), we find out that Julius raped a woman when he was in his teens. And then, very conveniently, forgot about it. He is reminded when the woman confronts him at a party. The two of them have been forming a friendship of sorts over the span of a few months. And of course, throughout that entire relationship, he never "remembers" what he did. After the woman tells him about the encounter, Julius leaves without saying anything to her.

And then the subject is never broached again. Like...at all. Not even a little bit.

Immediately after the party, Julius launches into a philosophical, internal monologue about Nietzsche. The next chapter is literally about him setting up his office. We get more of the same riveting description and stream-of-consciousness content until we have the distinct pleasure of learning about how birds die when they collide with the Statue of Liberty. For two pages. Then the novel abruptly stops. That's it.

SA is such a traumatic and devastating topic that if you choose to write about it, I am (personally) of the opinion that you have an obligation to your readers to handle it well. In Open City, Cole seems to opt for not "handling it" at all. There was no foundation, no work done throughout the book that would have allowed this bombshell to fit within the intrinsic logic of the narrative. There was no true change, either in plot structure or in characterization, which occurred afterwards that marked its importance in the story. You quite literally could take out the few pages where Julius attends the party and learns of the SA and the reader would never be the wiser. And that, to me, is a huge fucking red flag. I hold the opinion that it was completely, utterly, heartbreakingly unnecessary to include, and that Cole only did so for the sake of shock value. I hope that this is not the case—perhaps I missed some elusive string of continuity among the descriptions and metaphors that would have lent subtlety, empathy, and nuance to this portrayal of trauma. But as for now, I no longer possess the emotional bandwidth to search for it—this book has robbed me of that. And if the point is that "there is no point," that violence is senseless and that the perpetrators will go on with their lives completely unaffected? I guess that's a valid point to make, but I still don't think it was executed very well.

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