Thank you to NetGalley, Caleb Azumah Nelson, and Grove Atlantic for allowing me to read the ARC of Open Water in exchange for an honest review.
Honestly, I had trouble reading and following this story, but plan to read it again at a later date and read with fresh eyes. The story shows us how hard it is to navigate being different from the majority of your friends and colleagues. We see how important friendships can be, and how they can sometimes turn into a serious relationship. After all the five star reviews, I look forward to rereading this story with a whole new understanding.

Gorgeous novella - breathtaking prose about a relationship between a man and woman - it’s origin and it’s course. Themes of identity and
Racism are central. As I’m currently following the George Floyd trial I was particularly affected by the character’s descriptions of being a black man in the world.

Magnificent. Truly stunning. Go read this.

Thank you to Viking Publishers for the advanced copy of this wonderful book. I’m so grateful.

A lyrical novella that contemplates lives that confront both love and hate. Beautifully written, it is at times introspective, and heartbreaking. At times the prose was so lovely I found myself re-reading sentences, paragraphs over and over again, yet other times I found myself re-reading parts again because they were so difficult to internalize the hate and brutality that black people are unjustly suffering far too often.

Set primarily in London, two people who meet through Samuel, a friend of the unnamed male who is a photographer, the unnamed female Samuel’s date is a student and dancer. The attraction is immediate. They become friends, spending time together without Samuel. As time passes their friendship evolves into more, a love filled with passion, a passion expressed but not openly shared in words. After a time, navigating that transition brings up fears, and a vulnerability that seems to overwhelm him. The traumas of his past that haunt him, and so he begins to pull away from her.

’To give it a voice is to sow a seed, knowing that somehow, someway, it will grow. It is to admit and submit to something which is on the outer limits of your understanding.’*

Where they had been spending much of their time together, days and nights, his post-trauma fears have overwhelmed him to the point where he lacks a way to share them with her, and so he withdraws. Hides behind his silence, unable to share his memories of the racial violence he’s seen and endured. She, of course, unaware of his reasons, feels only the rejection, the lack of even enough feeling, caring for her feelings, to share his thoughts with her.

A story shared through elegant prose that beautifully captures their world, an honoring of these lives, the impact of systemic racism and the experiences of those who are harassed, or worse, because of the colour of their skin.

* Quote included subject to change upon publication

Pub Date: 13 Apr 2021

Many thanks for the ARC provided by Grove Atlantic / Grove Press, Black Cat

Exhilarating prose. What I mean by that is that I was exhilarated. I could feel my heart beating faster as I read on. I can't remember having such an immediate, visceral reaction to the first words, the first beginnings of a story. It unfolded before me like a billowing curtain. It kept getting better. I'm grateful to be reminded that words on a page can do these things.

With thanks to Grove Atlantic, Caleb Azumah Nelson and Netgalley for providing an eARC

Lyrical, poetic, beautiful. This debut novella is a moving narration of two young black artists softly, gently, falling in love amidst a traumatic and systemically racist world.

This introspective novella examines themes of love and friendship, trauma and sacrifice, brutality and beauty.

The tender exploration of the male MC's relationship with each of his family members, and the struggle with his mental health through the lens of toxic masculinity and systemic racism is palpable, and the fear permeates whenever the MC is confronted by police or threatened on any ordinary walk through the city, causing him to constantly evaluate how the world views him as simply 'a black body', and to consistently dwell on his mortality.

Very much enjoyed the black culture and music references which ground the novella in the absolute present day, (or the recent past during recollections), making it a very modern and relatable book, but also lending a very lyrical quality to the prose. I also felt it to be very theatrical (in that I can imagine it easily translating into a stage production, not that it is dramatic).

An astonishingly beautiful novella. The central relationship is drawn in the most intimate and raw way. The themes of race, racism, culture, home, music, friendship and family are deftly woven in between and around that relationships unfolding. A stunning debut.

Thank you to the author, Grove Atlantic and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Wow. Rarely have I read a book that is so evocative with so few words, expressing depths of emotion with spare, poetic brilliance. It's very short, more a novella than a novel, but holds so, so much. Told in the second person, it explores identity, intimacy, what it means to be young and black, trying to cope with the unrelenting pressure of racism in all its forms. And this is a debut. Highly recommend!

I did not read it as much as slip through it. Thank you @netgalley and @groveatlantic for this e-ARC. Also thanks @alejandro.reads for getting me to the page on this. I am so excited to discuss, maybe cry, together.
This is a meditation, an extended poem, a dilution. Caleb Azumah Nelson writes us a map of love, art, and weight - refracted through the Black maleness. The title comes from Nelson’s metaphor for love - love is like swimming into open water. Maybe lovers wade out one by one, but you meet where air and water blend. You meet in the lightness of it all. The buoyancy water affords tests your limits, helps you take leaps of faith. In open water, there is nothing but trust.
If this is a novelic-poem, then it comes that I must unpack it with poetic devices, no? At the core the story is the volta - love’s young flame is turned by trauma that is greater than the sum of its parts. As a Black male, our narrator has “spent a life so close to death that it was less a life lived...more one survived.” - the women in this novel are made weary by grief. Their sons and boyfriends are marked for destruction, and sometimes love cannot survive this.
But the joy and beauty of the novel come time again, like waves lapping up on a shore. The lovers circle each other, falling back into orbit over the months. Never strangers, always home. There is a comfort in the everyday serendipities of lovers that is explored as destiny in these pages. The novel hinges on freedom in expression of Black masculinity - a visit to the Barbershop is an act of loving oneself. “You love yourself enough to take care.” Mastery of art is powerful, as is “being able to flex within that.” Our narrator’s persona necessitates vulnerability, which is not to be mistaken for lack of confidence. How far he sings from hypermasculine stereotypes.
Some final thoughts - I was surprised in a tender love story, that some of my favorite quotes were about reading. “Rather than asking what is your favorite work, let’s ask, what continues to pull you back?”

Open Water is a short novel about two Black artists – a photographer and a dancer – falling in and out of love in South East London. While their relationship is key to the story, this is less a romance than it is a beautifully written look at what it’s like to be a young Black male in London. I think the second person point-of-view worked well in this story and enjoyed the way that the story is told through snapshots of the narrator’s life, but the style choices did keep me at a bit of a distance from the characters and made the timeline of the story a bit hard to follow. The writing is so lyrical, and I bookmarked countless pages with quotes that resonated with me. I’m excited to see what Nelson writes next.

Thank you to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for providing me with an eARC of Open Water in exchange for an honest review.

this book is poetry, meant to be read in the safe harbour of someones arms you love it is also about the pain, fear and anger about being black and racism. this is a book to be read aloud and to sink and rise with all the feelings it evokes

A lyrical, beautifully written story, however there were a few stylistic choices that I didn't personally love.

First the pluses. I really enjoyed getting a deep dive into the main character's head. (The woman, we get less of a sense of) and his perspective on what it's like to be a young, Black man. I felt like this book was less of a story about a relationship between two characters (which is weird since that's how it's promoted), and more about the psychology and experiences of that one man.

Toward the later third of the book, there is some truly amazing writing like, "Sometimes you forget that to be you is to be unseen and unheard, or it is to be seen and heard in ways you did not ask for. Sometimes you forget to be you is to be a Black body, and not much else."

For me personally, the first two thirds of the book, which concentrated more on the relationship, were harder to connect with. At one point the woman says they can't start a physical relationship because the man is her best friend. This struck me as a little strange since, according to the reader's sense of time, they've only just met and hung out a few times. While I'm clear on what drew these two together, I was less so on why they kept resisting the connection. And again, we don't get much of a sense of the woman's perspective in general, (there are only a few "She" sections.)

Later in the book, there is a reference in the story to things bobbing and weaving in the water and I felt that this was also an apt metaphor for how this book was written overall. The style of writing almost seems to keep the reader at a distance--events are referred to obliquely rather than experienced in real time, and the book itself is written in 2nd person of "you," which creates a sense of distance. While I appreciated the lyrical writing, I didn't love those choices. But perhaps that was the point. Perhaps the style of writing (which holds the reader at a distance) is mirroring the alienation that this man experiences in his own country?

Overall, though I didn't thoroughly enjoy the experience of reading this book, I did appreciate the craft of it. Thanks to the author and NetGalley for granting me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

A very different kind of love story -different in several important ways.
Open Water is an intimate narrative of falling in love and creating, maintaining a safe harbor with the beloved in the midst of a hostile stereotyping society. Nelson demonstrates how the second person voice can be exactly the right approach to create that safe space while revealing the surrounding bruising and battering as a given. This is a short book and could be read in a sitting - with time added to feel and digest the luminous telling.

It wouldn’t be wrong to say that this is a poem disguised as a book, but just so.
An exquisitely written ode to love like the majestic open waters that on the surface may be calm but beneath the surface are tempestuous, uncertain and unfathomable.

With a second person narrator and a linear timeline, the story follows two young black artists (you, a photographer and she, a dancer) from similar backgrounds as they meet, fall in love and head towards the deep open waters of love, each weighted down by the baggage of their own identities and emotional scars.

The author writes with haunting reverberating prose that literary makes you stop in your tracks and appreciate the beauty of his words.
Even more moving and compelling are the words he leaves unsaid between the lines coming into existence because of his written words.

“The seed you planted so long ago grown, the roots clutching in the darkness, pulling each other closer.
Your lips meet under the canopy of a tree already showing autumnal symptoms.”

See what I mean!

Despite being about only 150 something pages, this novella is quite a heavy emotional read about the experience of being black in Britain today.

“You’re free to go now,” they say.
Are we ever?”

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

“Every time you remember something, the memory weakens, as you’re remembering the last recollection, rather than the memory itself.
Nothing can remain in tact. Still, it does not stop you wanting, does not stop you longing.”

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for the arc in exchange for an honest review.

While a very short novella, this work packs an oversized punch. I also appreciated the rarely-used (at least in full-length literary fiction) second person narrative voice, as it did interesting things to the relationship between the reader, the narrator, and the two central characters/lovers.

Two young black people met at a pub in London and their story, emotional, physical, and tense, is told in lyrical prose. This is a book you need to spend time with and love for the writing.

"You know that to love is both to swim and to drown. You know to love is to be a whole, partial, a joint, a fracture, a heart, a bone. It is to bleed and heal. It is to be in the world, honest."

Thank you, NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review!

This story was beautifully heartwrenching. Open Water is a tender insight into race, love, art, grief, trauma, and loneliness. From a second pov narrative, Azumah's lyrical words show us the deepest parts of human emotion. While on the surface it is a love story, it also contains heavy topics like police brutality and systematic racism. It is not a light read but it's definitely worth it.

Although I loved the writing, the characters, and the themes that were discussed, i didn't like the repetition of some sentences throughout the book. i found them a bit repetitive and sometimes lost their own impact. Other than that, this debut is totally incredible and I'll definitely read whatever this author publishes in the future.

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

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: 4/5 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.

This story is musical, artistic, warm as much as it is hard on the experiences of two young black artists. The writing, exquisite.
Granted, the second person narration needs some getting used to, but it is this very style that makes the prose poetic and tender.
The main characters remain nameless in the entire story allowing you to put faces and names to them easily as you may have come across some of these relatable characters in real life.
The use of music develops the characters without saying much and further cements your relationship with the characters. You understand them and feel their every emotion through the songs. The dialogue on music is also a lesson on the music culture and the artistic inspirations behind the songs.
Do not once be fooled by the books mall size to thinking you will finish it in a day, brace yourself for a hell of a ride.

An ambitious novella, Caleb Azumah Nelson delivers a lyrical tale of young lovers who have to navigate their complicated feelings for one another as well as the isolation they have felt growing up as Black British. Their story is told using 2nd person and is extremely reflective of the emotional struggles that both of the characters face.

They meet in a pub through his friend and her boyfriend and soon realize that they care deeply for each other. Through their connection of art, she a dancer and he a photographer, they begin meeting to work on a collaberation which leads to conversations about their childhood and shared similarities. When they realize that these feelings exists, things become complicated with their friends Samuel and even after the friendship and relationships end, the main characters still do not share their true love for one another.

As their relationship grows the story takes a turn into deeper issues such as the main characters fear of the police and of feeling like he is nothing more than just a "black body." There are scenes depicting police harrassment and possible gang violence which all lends itself to understanding why the main character is so closed off and unable of trusting or letting himself be loved by his best friend and now lover.

There are both wonderfully beautiful things about this story and very frustrating things about it which might be more of a personal preference. The good is that Nelson writes so beautifully that it seems as if he is writing the soul of a romantic as true as a soul could ever be written. The metaphors that he chooses to illicit a feeling of place and emotion are quite masterfully done. One can really feel the agony of the decisions being made and those left unmade.

What I didn't enjoy, however, is the point of view. It left me feeling quite detached from the characters. I often had a hard time keeping track of who was being referred to at certain points in the narrative. Because I felt no connection to the characters, I had a hard time feeling a great depth of emotion either way other than annoyance. Annoyance was the greatest feeling I had because I felt as if I was reading the diary of an angsty teen who was caught up in the idea of romantic relationships as opposed to the reality. It reminds me of how whole heartedly kids give themselves to their first few relationships before realizing that the "perfect match" doesn't actually exist.

Then, the book takes a turn into the racial injustice part. It seems to almost come out of nowhere and is not fit into the book seamlessly. One minute we are reading about two young adults who love each other with a will they/won't they type feeling, and the next we are in this place with the male lead decides that his months or years (hard to tell) of pining after this woman are worth throwing away because of racial injustice. It wasn't explained enough or melded together enough for my liking. Both of those topics on their own make sense, but enough wasn't done to fit them together in the same story.

Lastly, I'm not sure if I would classify this as a novel/novella as it reads more like the author's stream of concious or rambling thoughts. While some of it was quite lyricaly and beautiful, a lot of it almost seemed to spill out of the authors brain onto the page with no logic.

That is not to say that this book isn't worth reading, it just wasn't for me!

Thanks to netgalley for providing me with an advanced readers copy in return for an honest review.

This book is a moving narration of 2 young adults, both Black and English who meet in a London pub. Themes of intimacy and vulnerability in relationship are beautifully portrayed against and within the backdrop of the effects of racism. This is a book that you’ll want to read, both for the insights you’ll receive and simply for the beautiful writing style of this author. #openwater #goodreads #amazon