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A review by clairewords
Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi
5.0
Like nothing else I've ever read, an inner journey told from the inside, putting the reader in a position of imagining, even understanding what it might be like to have your subconscious and conscious mind occupied by other entities, because reality here has been depicted from their perspective giving full voice to the many entities, birthed at different times (through traumas) how they lie dormant and are awakened, how they somehow co-habit this one body and justify their existence and inclinations.
Truly an astounding, transparent work that takes an understanding of our 'being' into another dimension.
These separate entities one with characteristics that then manifest into different behaviours through human 'Ada' who both suffers from them and is supported by them, at times even dependent on them. They are all one, but with many aspects that from the external perspective might be judged as something already labelled, such as personality disorder, schizophrenia, because we have limited boxes for defining otherly states of being.
However the way the author depicts these influences and describes being human as a temporary vessel for another kind of presence and until Ada understands and accepts this, she continues to suffer as if she is one and not all of them.
"All the madnesses, each and every blinding one, they can all be traced back to the gates. Those carved monstrosities, those clay and chalk portals, existing everywhere and nowhere and all at once. They open, things are born, they close. The opening is easy, a pushing out, an expansion, an inhalation: the dust of divinity released into the world. It has to be a temporary channel, though, a thing that is sealed afterward, because the gates stink of knowledge, they cannot be left swinging wide like an slack mouth, leaking mindlessly. That would contaminate the human world - bodies are not meant to remember things from the other side. There are rules. But these are gods and they move like heated water, so the rules are softened and stretched. The gods do not care. It is not them after all, that will pay the cost."
Truly an astounding, transparent work that takes an understanding of our 'being' into another dimension.
These separate entities one with characteristics that then manifest into different behaviours through human 'Ada' who both suffers from them and is supported by them, at times even dependent on them. They are all one, but with many aspects that from the external perspective might be judged as something already labelled, such as personality disorder, schizophrenia, because we have limited boxes for defining otherly states of being.
However the way the author depicts these influences and describes being human as a temporary vessel for another kind of presence and until Ada understands and accepts this, she continues to suffer as if she is one and not all of them.
"All the madnesses, each and every blinding one, they can all be traced back to the gates. Those carved monstrosities, those clay and chalk portals, existing everywhere and nowhere and all at once. They open, things are born, they close. The opening is easy, a pushing out, an expansion, an inhalation: the dust of divinity released into the world. It has to be a temporary channel, though, a thing that is sealed afterward, because the gates stink of knowledge, they cannot be left swinging wide like an slack mouth, leaking mindlessly. That would contaminate the human world - bodies are not meant to remember things from the other side. There are rules. But these are gods and they move like heated water, so the rules are softened and stretched. The gods do not care. It is not them after all, that will pay the cost."