A review by angelayoung
Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson

dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad 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? It's complicated

5.0

Open Water is a poem or a song or an incantation or all three: it certainly cast a spell on me. The repeated sentences at the beginnings of paragraphs give the novel a musical rhythm, but they also highlight the different events and feelings that follow each identical opening sentence. The novel is a poignant and poignantly honest love story about the ways we hide what we feel from the very person we want to tell how we feel - but it's also a reminder to White folk that Black folk, particularly young Black men, are still not safe from the police on our streets. Not safe from unwarranted racist police harassment, and not safe from death without cause, at the hands of the police. Young Black men, this novel shows us, are also not safe from the fear and trauma that racist police behaviour inevitably fills them with. Open Water pleads with us, through its dramatic situations, to live the lives we long to live and - if we're White, as I am - it also pleads with us to understand just how much racism there still is in our country, racism that must be undone. Yes, I did say our country. I am British and this novel is written by a young Black British man and set in south-east London, not in America.