Reviews with content warning for Cultural appropriation - Open water

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Open water by Caleb Azumah Nelson

4 reviews

autismandniamh's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad slow-paced

4.5

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serving_goffman's review against another edition

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emotional inspiring reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

perfect, i‘m grateful to have read it.
the second person narration seemed so ambitious at first, but it really worked, and made you feel really immersed in the story and empathetic to the main characters. the writing is wonderfully lyrical and almost hypnotic in its use of repetition and metaphors. incredible meditations on putting feelings into words, and the black body on modern britain. joyful and sad in perfect balance, a breathtaking work of art and highly impactful and important read.

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vasha's review against another edition

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hopeful reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Open Water is a literary love story, the story of a Ghanaian-British man, a photographer, trying to find an authentic, open way to love despite the trauma of repeated encounters with violence and police brutality. I had some reservations about reality of the love story: I was very unconvinced by how the protagonist and his girlfriend (both unnamed, though other characters in the book have names) supposedly became instant best friends when they met. The later stages of their relationship were rather better depicted. Part of the book is also devoted to the protag's interactions with other Black men (and a few women)--I found the sections about his friends interesting. It's quite interior, full of analysis of the protag's mind, which he is self-aware about although barely able to speak his thoughts aloud; also, it spends a fair bit of page space on reflections about being Black.

As befits literary fiction, the literal content of this book is overshadowed by how it's told: its interweaving of metaphors; its frequent flashbacks guided by similarities and emotions; its repetitive, rhythmed prose (which, sadly, was rather undone by the fact that the audiobook was monotonously narrated by the author himself). I like this kind of thing, but I wasn't entirely won over by how it was carried out in this case. Too often, I was jerked out of the reflective writing by the conventionality of a paragraph or the intrusion of banal language into a high-flying passage. A description of playing basketball, a list of physical and emotional experiences each prefaced by "You want to...," ends "You just want to be free" as if this was a climax.

I'm only referring to the narration, because most of the dialogue is impoverished on purpose, the protagonist being reduced to few words or silence at important moments. The girlfriend's verbal skills are something for the protagonist to aspire to. She lyrically describes what dancing is like for her: "I’m making space and I’m dancing into the space. I’m like, dancing into the space the drums leave, you know, between the kick and the snare and the hat, where that silence lies, that huge silence, those moments and spaces the drums are asking you to fill." The protagonist answers less inventively by inviting her to a club where he says there's "an energy that's very freeing, a bunch of black people being themselves."

Another problem I had with the book is that it's stuffed with talk about other works, mostly music but also literature, film, and visual arts. It felt too consciously academic. Overall, the experience of reading this book wasn't terrible, and it had some real high points (there are passages I'd enjoy quoting at length) and a satisfying ending.

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just_one_more_paige's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

This short novel's release felt like it went a bit under the radar, from what I could tell. I saw a few pub day reviews, but overall (to be horribly punny) it seemed to not have made too much of a splash. But right after reading that it had been shortlisted for the Costa Book Award for First Novel (which it has now won), it came across my personal radar as I checked it back in at the library. And in what is becoming a clear pattern, I turned around and checked it right out to myself (after making sure there weren't any holds on it, of course).

Open Water is a story of falling in love. Two Black British young adults meet in a pub one evening in London and the spark of connection between them is immediate. Over time spent together, they learn all the things they share (having won scholarships to private schools - places they both struggled to find a sense of belonging - and having both become artists, trying to find their place spiritually in that world and physically-emotionally in the cities where they live) and that connection grows ever deeper. Despite the complications of how they met and the vulnerabilities inherent in creating a deep bond with another human, the two fall for each other...and must choose to face together or cave separately to the external violence and grief and fear of their daily lives.

For all it's short length, this novel packed some deep emotions. And it began with the writing. Told in a sort of confessional voice, as the narrator looks back at the way their relationship began and blossomed, but as if it was being written/spoken to the "you" the he was falling in love with, a sort of clarifying of his perspective of the way things unfolded and an attempted explanation of his internal processes that he wasn't always able to share in the moment. This second person style of writing is one that doesn't always work, but, for me, it really did here. Past that, the composition of the writing itself was gorgeous. There was a sort of urgency in Nelson's writing, conveyed perfectly with the rhythmic flow of the words and sentences. The inexorable pull between two people who fit so effortlessly is written so viscerally. This is poetry about intimacy in its less often celebrated forms, that of emotional and physical closeness, as opposed to (or before the onset of) sexual closeness. And then the dual sense(s) of contentment with that and a tense stalemate on the precipice of giving in to the desire for more (or for the sexual), is spectacularly communicated. Overall, the general, curshing, feelings of uncertainty and fear, in life and in love, and the questions about where and when one is free to feel/express those feelings, that create the emotional cornerstones of this novel, are potent.

Additionally, this novel serves as an ode to Black artistry. With the careers of the MCs, photography and art, the myriad musical highlights and references, and the many references to Black art and artists, this is truly a nod to all this Black art. Nelson also uses art as a metaphor for the ways Black bodies move in the world, the way they are seen and treated indiscriminately and without regard to individuality, represented through the many callings-out of the difference between being looked at and being seen, within each personal relationship and in the world at large. The way he writes about the safety but distance in one, the comfort but vulnerability in the other, and how they interact, is...phew, phenomenal. This exploration goes hand in hand with the internal discussion of the narrator with himself (and "to" our unnamed love interest/co-MC), about the impossibility of being vulnerable when you have never had a chance to practice softness in real life, no freedom or safe space in which to do so. It's a heartbreaking commentary on navigating the world in a Black body, and the grief and effort and tiredness that come with that, to the potential exclusion of so much else. And so, where there is Black love and connection in these pages, it is that much meaningful.

From the very first page, there is an air of inevitable sorrow laced throughout, and yet the hope builds, making the fall at the end that much harder to bear, emotionally. But it was such a stronger story for that. While short, the poetic writing style would have been tough for a longer book, so I appreciate it for what it was. Just a stunning debut, a gut punch of the highest order. In Nelson's own words, this novel is “daydreams and night reveries.” It is “a little breathless, a little ecstatic, a little sad” in its vibe.

“Besides, sometimes, to resolve desire, it's better to let the thing bloom. To feel this thing, to let it catch you unaware, to hold onto the ache. What is better than believing you are heading towards love?”

“You don’t talk here, but even if you did, the words would fail you, language insufficient to reflect the intense mess of being this intimate with each other.”

“All you have wanted to do was hold each other in the darkness. Now, you have opened the box and left it unguarded in the night. You have both placed faith in the other that you will akw up intact. You have acted on a feeling. You are in a memory of the present. You are tumbling through a fever dream, surfacing only to plunge once more.”

“What you’re trying to say is that it's easier for you to hide in your own darkness, than emerge cloaked in your own vulnerability. Not better, but easier. However, the longer you hold it in, the more likely you are to suffocate. At some point, you must breathe.”

“Let’s ask: which came first, the violence or the pain?”

“The songs are full of nostalgia, which is to say they are full of mourning; one remembers that which came before, often with a fond sadness, a want to return, despite knowing to return to a memory is to morph it, to warp it. Every time you remember something, the memory weakens, as you're remembering the last recollection, rather than the memory itself. Nothing can remain intact. Still, it does not stop you wanting, does not stop you longing.”

“…doing nothing really, which is something, is an intimacy in itself. To not fill your time with someone is to trust, and to trust is to love. […] ...content in the absence of distractions, content in the presence of one another.”

"It's one thing to be looked at, and another to be seen."

“You know that to love is both to swim and to drown.”

“There’s and anger you have. It is cool and blue and unshifting. You wish it was red so it would explode from your very being, explode and be done with, but you are too used to cooling this anger, so it remains. And what are you supposed to do with this anger? What are you supposed to do with this feeling? Some of you like to forget. Most of you live daily in a state of delusion because how else is one meant to live? In fear? Some days, this anger creates an ache so bad you struggle to move. Some days, the anger makes you feel ugly and undeserving of love and deserving of all that comes to you. You know the image is false, but it's all you can see of yourself, this ugliness, and so you hide your whole self away because you haven't worked out how to emerge from your own anger, how to dip into your own peace. You hide your whole self away because sometimes you forget you haven't done anything wrong. Sometimes you forget there's nothing in your pockets. Sometimes you forget that to be you is to be unseen and unheard, or it is to be seen and heard in ways you did not ask for. Sometimes you forget to be you is to be a Black body, and not much else.”

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