Almost a decade ago (!), I wrote about Teju Cole‘s 2012 novel, Open City.
Many of those same comments apply to Tremor, published in 2023. Cole’s ability to pay attention to characters and their emotional lives on the one hand and the world of ideas and intellectual musings on the other remains fantastic, and that interplay dominates much of Tremor.
Like Open City, Tremor is a novel of the diaspora, and its protagonist is likewise challenged by their identity as an African in the USA. Here, they are an artist: a photographer and a scholar, and a bit of a wanderer (these are, fwiw, these descriptors also apply to Cole himself). Also like Open City, while there is a plot–things do happen–the core of the book are the musings of the characters, the elegant and thoughtful short journeys into questions of history, of ethics, of contemporary politics. Perhaps this is a projection fueled by Cole’s own claim of Tremor being an attempt to capture the pre-pandemic world, but I did have a sense of foreboding reading it, a notion that there was some unknown doom lurking in the future for all involved.
There is an interlude towards there end where Cole breaks the ongoing narrative for a chapter containing a multitude of short narratives describing different people’s experiences of life in Lagos. It’s a sharp interruption, and may not work for some readers; however, I found it effective, communicating the diversity, complexity, and variety of experiences and perspectives that abound in his hometown. I think the purpose of this section is to intentionally decenter the narrative, to insist that each scene, each moment that Cole describes is merely from a particular perspective, representing, if you will, a particular snapshot with a particular point of view.
I enjoy Cole immensely, and feel drawn deeply into his musings and his characters. If novels of ideas are of interest, highly recommended.