Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson: book review

Open Water (2021) is set in London at the end of 2017.

The novel begins with a young man’s gaze at a female in a south-east London pub. She takes his breath away, but he is shy. After an awkward introduction, the British-Ghanaian narrator feels ‘a small joy, but a joy nonetheless.’

Both of them are young artists. He is a photographer and she is a dancer. They both had scholarships to study in private schools, but now they are trying to make a career from their artistic talents. It’s not easy, and neither is falling in love.

The narration moves from his thoughts to her thoughts. Then their ambitions, their self-doubts, their struggles to be honest and free and working and in love: ‘To be you is to apologize and often that apology comes in the form of suppression.’

She moves to Dublin for work. He knows ‘it’s easier to retreat than showing her something raw and vulnerable … to live as a version less than yourself. You sob often …’

This is a short, but powerfully poignant novel about love, fear, violence, and grief. It’s an intense, deep, explorative reflection of an aching vision of masculinity in a poetic world of suppressed feelings.

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MARTINA NICOLLS

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MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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