In the City

An award-winning kaleidoscope of a book that "shocks and stirs the urban heart," capturing city life on the edge of the twenty-first century. Winner of the PEN/Jerard Fund Award for a distinguished nonfiction work in progress, In the City is an unclassifiable, thoroughly original consideration of modern urban life. Colette Brooks's remarkable eye traverses an unnamed contemporary city committing "random acts of awareness." Brooks relays vivid glimpses of the anonymous urban dweller's experience, history, and culture to create a portrait that is deeply familiar yet entirely fresh. "Colette Brooks, with In the City, invents a kaleidoscope of prose that shocks and stirs the urban heart and mindset into shifting forms and patternscolor, sadness, shock of recognition, slice of history; lostness, foundness. She wields her sensibility like the conductor of a wayward subway train, following its uncharted route from Wonderland to Oz....In the city, Brooks reflects, 'once the unlikely has occurred, it seems inevitable.' So do the eye and memorable voice of Colette Brooks."PEN/Jerard Fund Award citation

“"What a bright, enchanting, radiant new voice! Through Colette Brooks's eyes--and her gorgeously crafted prose--I see my beloved city anew, and discover it all over again."”

"This is an engaging book, so fraught with self-consciousness as to bring into question our notions of writing and literary structure." -- Billy Collins, author of Sailing Alone Around the "I've read In the City three times and expect to read it again. In lovely, exact prose Colette Brooks has fixed her experience of urban life with insight and compassion and humor and a sense of the encompassing mystery." -- Stanley Kauffmann "The modern city, never more so than now, needs its intimate observers and quirky chroniclers. It needs passionate walkers and devoted eavesdroppers, collectors of disparate facts, images, and impressions. Colette Brooks's portrait is fragmented, edgy, tough-minded, unabashedly affectionate-a vivid reminder of a love affair that began with Whitman and Crane." -- John Loughery, author of John Sloan: Painter and R "Colette Brooks, with In the City, invents a kaleidoscope of prose that shocks and stirs the urban heart and mindset into shifting forms and patterns-color, sadness, shock of recognition, slice of history; lostness, foundness. She wields her sensibility like the conductor of a wayward subway train, following its uncharted route from Wonderland to Oz... In the city, Brooks reflects, 'once the unlikely has occurred, it seems inevitable.' So do the eye and memorable voice of Colette Brooks." -- Lois Gould, author of Mommy Dressing: A Love Story "What a bright, enchanting, radiant new voice! Through Colette Brooks's eyes-and her gorgeously crafted prose-I see my beloved city anew, and discover it all over again." -- Jay Neugeboren, author of Transforming Madness "A subtle, vivid portrait of an endlessly absorbing city." -- Kirkus Reviews "Brooks' carefully etched and wistful prose echoes that of such master necromancers of the city as Borges, Calvino, or Auster." -- Booklist "This book is one of a kind: a view right through the stone and steel, an X-ray of the city's consciousness." -- Luc Sante

Colette Brooks studied at Reed College and the Yale School of Drama. Her essays have appeared in The New Republic, The Georgia Review, and Partisan Review. She lives in New York City.

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