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A review by jesshindes
Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson
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? Yes
4.0
As I started reading Open Water I thought it was going to be a bit slight for me - or maybe a bit much of a love story, and I don't usually get that into a book that is *only* a love story - but by the time I'd finished it I'd changed my mind.
This was a debut novel last year and it's set in and around South London (proper South London in specific places, Frances Spufford take note!) (egregious error RE the Brockley overground station notwithstanding). It's about a male character - the narrator, although the book is told in the second person so it's also you, the reader, moving through the story as him - and a woman he meets and falls in love with. They're cautious in taking the first steps, or in moving from friendship to romance, and this is maybe the bit I had less patience for initially - I was like 'Just go for it guys, it's not that deep'. But then actually the whole point of the book is that it *is* that deep (I feel like there's an Open Water pun here somewhere) - because the book is also very much about what it is to exist as a Black person and specifically a Black man, in London, in a society where you can't ever know whether you're going to be seen for who you are or profiled as something you're not; where the police stop and search you as you're on your way to your friend's house for dinner, and it upsets you for weeks; where sometimes the violence or dehumanisation is so much that it's easier not to connect at all.
The book is in lots of ways very different to Natasha Brown's Assembly, which I read last year at about this time and which is also concerned with representing Black experience in London (albeit a different milieu), but I did find myself thinking of them alongside each other. They're both short, powerful debut novels that are more concerned with evoking a specific moment then with unfolding elaborate plots, and I think that as with Assembly this is one I'll find myself thinking over for a good while after having finished it.
This was a debut novel last year and it's set in and around South London (proper South London in specific places, Frances Spufford take note!) (egregious error RE the Brockley overground station notwithstanding). It's about a male character - the narrator, although the book is told in the second person so it's also you, the reader, moving through the story as him - and a woman he meets and falls in love with. They're cautious in taking the first steps, or in moving from friendship to romance, and this is maybe the bit I had less patience for initially - I was like 'Just go for it guys, it's not that deep'. But then actually the whole point of the book is that it *is* that deep (I feel like there's an Open Water pun here somewhere) - because the book is also very much about what it is to exist as a Black person and specifically a Black man, in London, in a society where you can't ever know whether you're going to be seen for who you are or profiled as something you're not; where the police stop and search you as you're on your way to your friend's house for dinner, and it upsets you for weeks; where sometimes the violence or dehumanisation is so much that it's easier not to connect at all.
The book is in lots of ways very different to Natasha Brown's Assembly, which I read last year at about this time and which is also concerned with representing Black experience in London (albeit a different milieu), but I did find myself thinking of them alongside each other. They're both short, powerful debut novels that are more concerned with evoking a specific moment then with unfolding elaborate plots, and I think that as with Assembly this is one I'll find myself thinking over for a good while after having finished it.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism
Moderate: Grief and Violence