Open City

Have you ever been to a wedding - you were there when the couple met, or you saw them one day when they were first going out, and you thought to yourself, oh yes, yes, this is a lovely relationship that's going to last, so at the wedding you feel ridiculously satisfied and proprietorial? It's a sweet, if unfounded and self-referential feeling, and it's rather how I feel as a novel called Open City is published in the US today. 

I'd encountered a brilliant and surprising writer, Teju Cole, in one guise and another, from when I first started reading blogs. One day he blogged a bit of something that seemed to be fiction.  And it was wonderful, as beautifully written and compelling as any novel I had ever read, and not at all like anything I'd ever read. Those first early intimations were a good while ago. He stopped blogging, and was much missed. But now a novel hits the streets, already garnering great praise and rave reviews like this and this.

I'll try and write about it properly, of course, as many people will be, and there'll be much to say. Today, though, I just want to jump up and down and cheer.