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cindypepper 's review for:
Freshwater
by Akwaeke Emezi
I started reading this nearly a year ago, and I honestly had to set it aside a few chapters in. The premise alone was enough to get me interested, but I was just about ready to mark it DNF due to the subject matter alone. It just wasn't my bag at the time, even if, objectively, I could appreciate the writing.
I read Emezi's later work, Death of Vivek Oji, weeks later, and enjoyed it, such that I devoured it in one sitting. I thought I'd pick up where I had left off with Freshwater (that, and I get weird about leaving books unfinished).
I wish I could say that I liked Freshwater the second time around, but sadly, this just didn't do it for me. I felt simultaneously unsettled and strangely unmoved, the latter probably because I could feel myself mulishly trudging through the last few chapters. (Which in retrospect doesn't make as much sense because Emezi is a fantastic writer? And the prose alone was great?) But I was getting lost beneath the nonlinear timeframe and the intertwining perspectives that it got harder to feel any sense of investment, and by the time I realized that, I was close to done with the book.
Anyway, I vastly prefer Death of Vivek Oji if you're looking to read anything by Akwaeke Emezi. Freshwater doesn't really do Emezi's prose justice and its scope is too unwieldy.
I read Emezi's later work, Death of Vivek Oji, weeks later, and enjoyed it, such that I devoured it in one sitting. I thought I'd pick up where I had left off with Freshwater (that, and I get weird about leaving books unfinished).
I wish I could say that I liked Freshwater the second time around, but sadly, this just didn't do it for me. I felt simultaneously unsettled and strangely unmoved, the latter probably because I could feel myself mulishly trudging through the last few chapters. (Which in retrospect doesn't make as much sense because Emezi is a fantastic writer? And the prose alone was great?) But I was getting lost beneath the nonlinear timeframe and the intertwining perspectives that it got harder to feel any sense of investment, and by the time I realized that, I was close to done with the book.
Anyway, I vastly prefer Death of Vivek Oji if you're looking to read anything by Akwaeke Emezi. Freshwater doesn't really do Emezi's prose justice and its scope is too unwieldy.