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A review by jesuisgourde
Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi
2.0
I was so disappointed by this book. The blurb on the back made it sound like it was going to be really beautiful and interesting and unique. It wasn't. It was all tell and no show. Which can be okay, I've read plenty of tell-rather-than-show novels, but what makes books like those good is an interesting plot or the main character having interesting thoughts/opinions. This book had neither. There was almost no plot, just description after description of Ada's unhealthy relationships and erratic behavior. But because the narrative is so distanced from said relationships and from Ada, the high stakes of this behavior is not felt, not really. None of the characters get delved into with any depth, even Ada. Random facts about her life at university or her childhood are tossed in without much thought in order to further a scene or explain an action, but we don't get a sense of her at all. She apparently is going to vet school, we get none of that. She's valedictorian, but we don't get any sense of her academic intelligence. She goes dancing every night but then has debilitating sciatica that she needs medications for (when did that happen?). People think she's sweet or that she takes care of other people, but we never get a sense of that, ever, because the only narrative is her sleeping with men and then her relationships falling apart either because of her behavior or because the men are assholes. The show rather than tell narrative also seriously undermines the poetic prose that crops up almost at random. If the rest of the book was more vivid, the flowery prose would have had a place. But this book felt flat. No plot, little stakes felt, no interesting characters, tell rather than showing everything. I read it so quickly, and it felt like I was just flying along in a flat desert with absolutely nothing interesting to look at or think about.
If I had known from the start that this book was essentially an embellished autobiography, Robert Pirsig-style, I would have maybe made some concessions while reading it, because it is straightforward and bland in a way that telling a personal story is, where you don't have to flesh out original characters because they're just regular people to you. But I only learned this 3/4 of the way through the book when I googled the author. So, reading it as a regular novel and not embellished nonfiction, it is uninteresting and not compelling at all.
If I had known from the start that this book was essentially an embellished autobiography, Robert Pirsig-style, I would have maybe made some concessions while reading it, because it is straightforward and bland in a way that telling a personal story is, where you don't have to flesh out original characters because they're just regular people to you. But I only learned this 3/4 of the way through the book when I googled the author. So, reading it as a regular novel and not embellished nonfiction, it is uninteresting and not compelling at all.