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A review by icarusandthesun
You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.25
this could've been nice you know. the writing was beautifully lyrical and i liked the themes of death and grief, and the talk about art and food was wonderfully comfortable.
but the rest... not so much.
this felt like a reality show in book form. like milf manor, but make it dilf manor and also erase all the fun because that shit wants you to take it seriously.
i hated all the characters. and i understand the situation in this book is messy and there's no real right or wrong, but the characters handled all of it so poorly, and how they acted just made me livid.
like feyi for example. so let me preface this by saying, feyi and her best friend do absolutely NOT pass the bechdel test. all they talk about is men (or love interests in general), and about fucking and their relationship problems. i swear, they do not talk about anything else, and it made it sort of hard to believe they're best friends.
but anyways, feyi - super unlikable, and there's no real depth to her character. her whole personality orbits around her dead husband and the art she creates ABOUT said dead husband and fucking her lover's dad. there was absolutely nothing else to her character, nothing to grasp, nothing to relate to or sympathise with.
what especially pissed me off was that she acted like she was so much better than nasir after he found out about them and lashed out at her. sure, he's an asshole for that, but the way she thought she had the high-ground was so annoying to me? because she's not at all better than him - she fucks her date's DAD man.
i sympathised with none of the characters, because they were all just the same shade of shitty.
still i feel like the author did nasir dirty. his reaction was extremely out of character, which i mean i guess makes sense, because you never know how a person truly is, but it was so INSANELY out of character, it felt like the author wrote him to be a shitty person so the reader feels bad for feyi and alim, even though nasir was nothing but a sweetheart at the beginning.
oh, and feyi and alim - don't even get me started. they bonded over grief for their lost loves, which is a nice icebreaker, right, but their entire relationship is built on that one thing they have in common. they had no chemistry whatsoever, and not any more mutual interests except maybe food and art but those conversations were pretty shallow and/or only there to build sexual tension (literally i will never get the image of them licking foam of each other's hands out of my head).
their relationship and love felt ingenuine and if this was real life, i doubt it would last.
but okay, let's end this on like a brighter note. i enjoyed the general trope of falling in love after a tragedy like that.
i also really loved feyi's art pieces and how they were described. as an artist myself, those fascinated me a lot.
and also, i fully support the idea of "older" people pursuing relationships, because we were conditioned to believe that new and fresh love is only for the young, and that you should stop trying at a certain age.
alim chose his children over love the first time and i thought it was nice to watch him coming out of his shell, because in the greater scheme of things, he's still young, and has long years of life still in front of him, and he deserves love, even if his children don't like it.
but you know... maybe not with your son's girlfriend next time.
but the rest... not so much.
this felt like a reality show in book form. like milf manor, but make it dilf manor and also erase all the fun because that shit wants you to take it seriously.
i hated all the characters. and i understand the situation in this book is messy and there's no real right or wrong, but the characters handled all of it so poorly, and how they acted just made me livid.
like feyi for example. so let me preface this by saying, feyi and her best friend do absolutely NOT pass the bechdel test. all they talk about is men (or love interests in general), and about fucking and their relationship problems. i swear, they do not talk about anything else, and it made it sort of hard to believe they're best friends.
but anyways, feyi - super unlikable, and there's no real depth to her character. her whole personality orbits around her dead husband and the art she creates ABOUT said dead husband and fucking her lover's dad. there was absolutely nothing else to her character, nothing to grasp, nothing to relate to or sympathise with.
what especially pissed me off was that she acted like she was so much better than nasir after he found out about them and lashed out at her. sure, he's an asshole for that, but the way she thought she had the high-ground was so annoying to me? because she's not at all better than him - she fucks her date's DAD man.
i sympathised with none of the characters, because they were all just the same shade of shitty.
still i feel like the author did nasir dirty. his reaction was extremely out of character, which i mean i guess makes sense, because you never know how a person truly is, but it was so INSANELY out of character, it felt like the author wrote him to be a shitty person so the reader feels bad for feyi and alim, even though nasir was nothing but a sweetheart at the beginning.
oh, and feyi and alim - don't even get me started. they bonded over grief for their lost loves, which is a nice icebreaker, right, but their entire relationship is built on that one thing they have in common. they had no chemistry whatsoever, and not any more mutual interests except maybe food and art but those conversations were pretty shallow and/or only there to build sexual tension (literally i will never get the image of them licking foam of each other's hands out of my head).
their relationship and love felt ingenuine and if this was real life, i doubt it would last.
but okay, let's end this on like a brighter note. i enjoyed the general trope of falling in love after a tragedy like that.
i also really loved feyi's art pieces and how they were described. as an artist myself, those fascinated me a lot.
and also, i fully support the idea of "older" people pursuing relationships, because we were conditioned to believe that new and fresh love is only for the young, and that you should stop trying at a certain age.
alim chose his children over love the first time and i thought it was nice to watch him coming out of his shell, because in the greater scheme of things, he's still young, and has long years of life still in front of him, and he deserves love, even if his children don't like it.
but you know... maybe not with your son's girlfriend next time.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Grief, Sexual content, Car accident, and Death
Moderate: Blood
Minor: Alcohol, Death of parent, and Injury/Injury detail