A review by lindserature
Tremor by Teju Cole

challenging medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? N/A
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

1.0

“Who knows what’s happening in someone else’s head? He cannot with any confidence say what’s happening in his own head.”

If at ~80% of your way through a novel you cannot say what it is about or who the characters are or what the actual point of it is, it might be time to give up. I definitely don’t understand what the author is trying to do with this fragmentary, disjointed, incoherent book; maybe it’s for someone who is more intelligent and innovative than I am. I just don’t get it. 

I did, however, appreciate this short passage about grief:

“But soon after his mind was carried by unseen waves and he began to think of you. And it was as though the thought of you suddenly expanded to fill his entire visual field. He tried to think of your face, your voice. He couldn’t. You’d been dead three years and he had never lost anyone that close to him before. He tried to think of your face. He couldn’t. He tried to remember your voice, you his beloved friend of nearly two decades. He couldn’t. The effort to think was a black cloud sitting in his mind, taking up all the space. He called out to you with the voice of his mind and you were not there and his breathing became shallow. He could not remember you. It was as though you had never had a face at all, and tears filled his eyes.”