Harare Review of Books

Thank you to #NetGalley and to the Publisher, Grove Atlantic, for this ARC.

145 pages.

First published in 2021.

Finished reading on 13 Mar 2021.

Genre: Fiction.

A stunning, shattering debut novel about two Black artists falling in and out of love

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 debut of recent years.

Whew. Lyrical, and poetic–very much like a long, long poem. I generally love lyrical writing, although this got a little tiring at times, like I wanted to rush the narrative along. There isn’t a lot of plot, or narrative, just a lot of feeling. But it is beautiful; somewhere between Love Jones and a song Erykah Badu must have written.

Trigger warnings for Black pain (without giving the plot away, there is *pain*).

Rated: 7/10 for the lyricism, although the length of the book took some of the magic away from what is a lovely poem. The style lets what’s there of narrative down, somewhat. Still beautiful though.

Read for: the love letter to Blackness.