Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson – Book Review

 

Publisher’s write-up:

‘Two young people meet at a pub in South East London. Both are Black British, both won scholarships to private schools where they struggled to belong, both are now artists -- he a photographer, she a dancer -- trying to make their mark in a city that by turns celebrates and rejects them. Tentatively, tenderly, they fall in love. But two people who seem destined to be together can still be torn apart by fear and violence.

At once an achingly beautiful love story and a potent insight into race and masculinity, Open Water asks what it means to be a person in a world that sees you only as a Black body, to be vulnerable when you are only respected for strength, to find safety in love, only to lose it. With gorgeous, soulful intensity, Caleb Azumah Nelson has written the most essential British debut of recent years.’

Open Water is the first novel written by Caleb Azumah Nelson, featuring a love story between two young black man and woman in the UK, the former being a photographer and the latter being a dancer. While the man is based in London, the woman is studying in Dublin and only gets to meet the ‘narrator’ occasionally.

The narration is done in an interesting manner – wherein, it is from the second person perspective and every time the narrator (the man) is referred to as ‘you’, it helps the reader to better put oneself in their shoes and imagine their perspectives. While we could read about inherent prejudices against a dark-skinned person in the UK, it was a different experience of oneself being that person, while reading this book.

That said, I also understood that the book is a tad autobiographical, given the author’s own British-Ghanian ancestry, with the narrator being a British man of Ghanian heritage as well. Moreover, the main character lives in Bellingham in South East London, similar to the author himself. Hence, reading the ‘about the author’ before starting the book can be a good idea.

There were also certain themes that were analysed – the intimacy between the two main characters and the doubts they had over the state of their relationship. Also, while there have been several books written about ethnic minorities facing discrimination, here, both the main characters were leading normal lives, while the author touched upon the subtle aspects of struggles of a black person in the UK, including the narrator having a traumatic episode which he does not wish to talk about.

The author adopted a poetic approach and between the two main characters, several of the conversations were interesting. Despite the small size of the novel, I would say this was still a slow read given you had to take your time to absorb all the contents of the book.

That said, this being a novella was an issue as well, given the author superficially touched upon many aspects but could never go deep. We know deeply about ‘you’, the narrator, but again, I would have liked to explore more on what event led to his trauma. The other character who had some level of mention was his partner, but we got to know very little about her as well. Maybe this could have been a longer novel but surely, this was a good start which encourages me to try other works of the author.

On that note, I award the book a rating of seven on ten.

Rating – 7/10

Have a nice day,
Andy