Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson is a tender, lyrical debut exploring love, race, and vulnerability. It was a truly mesmerizing read.

This is an absolutely stunning and original read. The book itself is small in size but there is nothing lacking about this beautiful love story. The messages about race and masculinity are poignant, especially in the current climate where there is two narratives at play: one that states that men's mental health is in crisis, and another that continues to push the view that men must be strong and brave. The vulnerability and openness of this novel is refreshing and evocative. An absolutely gorgeous read and one of my favourites of all time.

my soul? obliterated. my tears? could fill up a bathtub. my final shred of hope and happiness? gone.
my love for this book? immense and overpowering.

wow. a book has not made me feel this many emotions since A Little Life or Normal People. The way this book explores the complexities of humanity and what it means to love someone and to let someone love you is just too powerful to put into words. I ran out of tabs annotating this book, if that tells you anything.

read this book if you want to be broken. but, just know, you will be broken reading the most stunning prose possible.

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.

Tentatively, tenderly, they fall in love. But two people who seem destined to be together can still be torn apart by fear and violence.

Open Water is a novella that is written incredibly intimate and realistic, it's honestly mind blowing. Whenever it's described that the two main characters are having a drink or a barbecue or anything like that, it almost feels like you are there with them, sitting in the booth next to them, overhearing their conversations.

And in exactly that way the two main characters somehow remain sketches - the second person narration and the fact that their names are rarely mentioned really makes it feel like these are people you might know because they wait at the same bus stop as you each morning or go to the same grocery shop. But you don't really KNOW them.

This is a flimsy and poetic debut, full of love and devastation, set against the backdrop of a hot London summer. If this sounds like something you're into, you will love Open Water.

So this book. It's short, only about 150 pages, but does fit a good story in it. It's the story of 2 black artists trying to make it in London and what they have to go through the make their lives what they want, and how they fall in love. However, I don't like the writing style. It is so overly descriptive and flowy, and it's like you're reading a play script rather than a book. It was good, but not the style I really like.

What else is there to be said about Open Water?
It's a booksta favourite which I am 100% on board, but I couldn't imagine how beautifully, emotionally and elegantly @caleb_anelson 's words really were

For anyone who hasn't heard about this book, it's about two young artists, meeting up in London as they surface towards love and desire accustomed by life's grief, unpleasantries and Black culture

Some of you might think it's all about romance (which it's not my fav genre) circling around the two young lover's desire towards each other, but I am here to break the spell telling you that this is 👏A PIECE OF ART👏 , not only because of its magnificent written words, or its story, but the message the author was passing onto the readers, expressing the true face of love, sometimes cheesy, sometimes demonic and its colours surfacing the very beginning of every relationship.

Not only that, but the author is also connecting us to the Black Culture in the UK, written with so much love and intimacy as both of the characters won scholarships to private schools where they struggle to belong, being both celebrated and rejected by the community.

I will definitely be waiting for more of the author’s work in the future as this book is a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5

3.75 ✨


"You are safe here, you said. You are seen here. You can live here. We are all hurting, you said. We are all trying to live, to breathe, and find ourselves stopped by that which is out of our control. We find ourselves unseen. We find ourselves unheard. We find ourselves mislabelled. We who are loud and angry, we who are bold and brash. We who are Black. We find ourselves not saying it how it is. We find ourselves scared. We find ourselves suppressed, you said. But do not worry about what has come before, or what will come; move."

open water is the story of a young black man. It all starts when he meets the woman, for whom he feels a deep and strange attraction.

It is a short account of what it is like to be a young black man in England. It is about youth, love, struggle, race, and lots of other things that make up this mans identity.

Told in second person perspective, the book is a little bit hard to get into, but as you read more you somehow start to feel as if your wearing our hero's shoes and walking in them. Not only that, you start to see and experience things from his perspective.

Unfortunately, I felt quite detached from the narrative. I wanted to know more about the main character's life. Reading this book felt like seeing someone suffering without really knowing the main events that had led them to suffer. I wanted the book to explore the trauma and the pain in a more explicit way.

I think the strongest part of the book was the writing. The language of the book was so poetic and emotional without being flowery or over the top.

Overall, this was a very interesting reading experience.

Thanks to Netgalley and Grove Atlantic for providing an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I don't know if I've always liked the name 'Caleb' or whether I've just developed a crush on this author for his lyrical, incredibly moving way of expressing himself. This novel reads like a poem, the language is so beautiful. Yaa Gyasi's blurb calls it "tender poetry, a love song to Black art and thought' and there's not much more I can say to improve on that assessment. But I will say this, novels about Black creatives are too few.

'Open Water' catalogs the transformation of the relationship between two of the young, Black and gifted (him, a photgrapher, her a dancer) from acquaintances, to creative collaborators, to best friends, then lovers. The journey isn't a linear one, and doesn't end where either of them believe it will, but it is sweet and aching, and resounds with cultural and current references that most of us will recognize even if we are not--like they are--natives of the UK. What I loved most about this book was that it wasn't just about a couple trying to figure out whether and how to be together, it was about young Black people trying to figure out how to be in their own bodies--how to be seen without attracting negative attention, and how to create so they can be understood.

But I won't lie to you, this is a focused, rather than a casual or quick reading experience. Caleb Nelson's writing straddles the boundary between poetry and prose, and sometimes reads like a mood rather than a narrative. There's a lot of the main protagonist's interior and only brief glimpses of occasions and conversations and occurrences, but all of it works to create a vivid sense of a time in your life when you were in the middle of figuring out who and what to be.

I fell in love with the unnamed lovers a little bit myself, feeling how scared they were to have a connection so deep, worried they couldn't find a home in each other because they were not yet at home within themselves.

Anyway, I'm gushing now. Beautiful book. Beautiful, beautiful book.

A beautiful, weaving love story for the ages - very much in the vein of James Baldwin - and a love letter to London itself. There's difficult themes explored including the Black identity, the trauma of racism, and police brutality, all handled masterfully. But there is joy and love and euphoria,

“If flexing is being able to say the most in the least amount of words, is there a greater flex than love?”

Wow. Just wow.

This (tiny) book is a lyrical work of art. In just 160 pages, you are taken on a reflective journey of love, the effects of racism and trauma seeping through the cracks of life, and the experience of living as a Black male.

To be honest, I am having difficulty putting into words how wonderful I found this book. How can you write a review, after reading one of the most beautifully written books I’ve read in the last years? Words just seem to fall short.

The book is so beautifully written, it is almost as if you’re looking at the most stunning sunset. You want it to last longer, but the brevity of the moment also makes it so much more beautiful.

3 1/2 stars rounded up. The language is lovely, and I connected with the writing on race - my only problem was with the relationship, which felt too precious for me. But I'm an anti-romantic, so that's no surprise. Music is very important to the main characters, so I looked for a playlist and found it on Spotify. I've just started listening, and it seems like a well-curated way for me to hear music that doesn't usually reach me - at least not the best of it. Example: Right this moment, I'm listening to "Afraid of Us" by Jonwayne and Zeroh. I hope there's more like this.

Let me make this clear: I like different books. I often enjoy reading unique novels. I knew about second-person narrative and still expected to like this, but I simply couldn’t.

The second-person narrative is sometimes confusing, and you need more time to get into the story. But this is the part I liked. It was something fresh and different.

Open Water is a story of love, identity, and race written in beautiful language. The story is quite disjointed, and we get flashes from this romance and quite some stream of thought. I think this beautiful prose and the story don’t go well together. I can’t understand why even use such beautiful language in the first place to describe something that is not so interesting. Also, the dialogues often felt oversimplified, too mundane, and not something I would expect to read in this novel. Only towards the end, there are some interesting parts in the story. But I think they don’t go well with the rest of the story.

I needed a lot of time for 145 pages. This clearly shows that something didn’t work for me. But If you’re interested in reading this book, you could try it. Many people liked it. I’m the minority here, I guess.

There are some books which no matter how much you try and will to, you can not get yourself to love. I had heard only good things about the book before starting it and even though I wanted to love it, I had a feeling that I wouldn't and I didn't.

Open Water, told through second person introspection is a love story of two black British artists, one a photographer, another a dancer. It’s a story of them going from friends to lovers with a lot of things in between like grief, anxiety, identity and systematic oppression.

What I think kept me from adoring the book was maybe the poetic writing style, which had me read certain parts multiple parts and some just going above my mind and it affected my continuity a lot. I was unable to connect to the characters and their feelings as well.

In the future, I would like to reread this book when I am in a better state of mind.

Initially this book was hard to get into because of the 2nd person narrative, but once I got over that I really liked it! It's actually more like poetry than a novel as we see a photographer immediately smitten with a dancer when he sees her in a bar. Their relationship progresses slowly from friendship to love, and of course there are always issues regarding communication and racism in this modern world. But the prose is lovely and lyrical so it's clearly a love story worth reading!

Open Water was a beautiful novel about two artists, one a photographer and one a dancer, who begin as friends, but quickly and deeply fall in love. This short book packs a punch. It not only shares the beautiful and pure moments of a relationship, but also the bad parts rooted in insecurity and lack of communication. Furthermore, the book explores the extreme racial issues imbedded in our society. The main character shares with readers how a Black man navigates through daily life, often on edge and full of mixed emotions. Caleb Nelson’s writing is intimate and powerful. I cannot believe this is a debut! I will definitely be reading more of his work.

This was a tender, romantic, beautiful love story. Once I got past the second person point of view i was captivated. there are so many beautiful quotes that I have to go back and do a reread.

Reading this felt like floating down a river- sometime it was a lazy river and then roaring rapids. This is a love story, but not a conventional love story. At its core, it is an exploration being Black in a society that streaks to destroy you.

As soon as I started reading this novel, I knew that I wasn't going to get along with it. And that's primarily because of the writing. I've seen some people describe it as flowery or beautiful, but to me it just read like it was trying too hard to be flowery or beautiful, but never quite got there. I love novels that are written in a more introspective, philosophical way, especially novels that focus on love stories like this one, but to me the writing style took away from this story rather than added to it. I always find it hard with novels that try to have writing like this and miss the mark because, as was the case with Open Water, I can't get past the writing to the meat of the story. The writing feels more indulgent than moving or memorable, and so it ends up taking away from the story. I'd be interested in seeing what else Caleb Azumah Nelson comes out with in the future, but unfortunately this novel was not to my taste.

Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson is a beautifully written novella/novel that proves that good things can come in small packages. Weighing in at around 150 pages, this tightly woven story follows two Black British artists navigating the ups and downs of love together.

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for sharing this book with me. All thoughts are my own.

I'm honestly not sure how to describe this book other than to say I feel a weight after finishing it. It isn't bad or good, just an honest kind of weight.

This is one of those books that you feel like you could read multiple times and pull different things from it after each reading. The use of second person ("you") point-of-view for the main character is visceral and close to the skin. It makes you lean in and pull away depending on what's happening to him in the scene. The language both beautiful and raw, often at the same time, and makes the imagery incredibly strong.

I can tell I'm falling into a trap here by reviewing this book as many things all at once, and yet it's the best way I can think to say it. I'd recommend this novel to absolutely anyone as I do with any book that I feel will be with me a long time, such as this one will be.

Note: I received a free electronic edition of this book via NetGalley in exchange for the honest review above. I would like to thank them, the publisher, and the author for the opportunity to do so.