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