Open City

Review

The best word I can think of to describe this novel is 'wandering'. Julius wanders through New York City and Brussels, trying to locate himself in time, the city, and the world. It's also a novel about seeing: what we don't see and what we don't look at. I enjoyed it all the more for being very familiar with the terrain — or maybe unfamiliar, as I discovered while reading.

Prayer was, I had long settled in my mind, no kind of promise, no device for getting what one wanted out of life; it was the mere practice of presence, that was all, a therapy of being present, of giving a name to the heart’s desires, the fully formed ones, the as yet formless ones.