A review by angelayoung
Small Worlds by Caleb Azumah Nelson

dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring 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? Yes

5.0

Small Worlds is a poem of a novel. Caleb Azumah Nelson's language flows and repeats and circles and dances and loops back on itself and sometimes resolves, before it curls out in a new direction, just like the jazz music and musicians and improvisations and the dancing he so lyrically writes about. It's full of beautiful melancholy (as he describes The Roots's Things Fall Apart). It's full of love, feeling, disappointment, sorrow, remembering and forgetting, loss, death and healing. And it's full of wisdom. Here are a few of my favourites (but there are many):   

Anger is just love in another body.
and
Since the one thing which might solve our problems is dancing ... .
and
A visitor in my own language.
and
I'm trying  desperately to avoid the shadow of grief, wanting to walk in the brightness of her spirit.
and
While grief is never over, we find a way to walk in the light someone has left behind. (Or, as I relayed it to a friend, not quite remembering it: Grief is always with us, but there are times when we walk in the light of the person who died, not always in their shadow ... .'
and last but not least:
Maybe this is all we need sometimes, for someone else to believe in the possibilities you see for yourself.