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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.
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This is a beautifully written debut. I found the 2nd person tense disjointing, but I imagine that could be purposeful - it evoked Claudia Rankine's "Citizen," both in the use of this tense and the subject matter. I thought the book would be more about the love story, and while it was, it veered into discussing the realities of living in a Black body. I thought this was where it particularly shined. And Nelson brings up the discussion of how the trauma of living in our modern society as a Black man impacts the relationship. I thought it was very poignant that the narrator was unnamed (also in the tradition of Rankine's work).
There were so many beautiful, poetic moments, but these are some of my favorites:
* Perhaps that is how we should frame this question forever; rather than asking what is your favorite work, let’s ask, what continues to pull you back? (43)
* …to return to a memory is to morph it, to warp it. Every time you remember something, the memory weakens, as you’re remembering the last recollection, rather than the memory itself. Nothing can remain intact. (89)
* …the bulk of the camera felt heavier in your hands than it should. Seeing people is no small task. (163)
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