Book – Open Water

Author: Caleb Azumah NelsonPublisher: Black Cat New York, an imprint of Grove PressReviewer: Stephen Keim

Open Water is Caleb Azumah Nelson’s debut novel. It is little more than a novella running to just 164 pages.

Among the review extracts set out at the front of the book, one from Yaa Gyasi describes Open Water as “tender poetry”. The description is not wholly wrong as Azumah Nelson’s prose is lyrical and his repetition of passages to make a point or to reinforce a mood is an effective poetical device.

Open Water is written in the second person in which the omniscient narrator addresses the chief (male) protagonist as the narrator relates the events of the novel. The fourth paragraph of the prologue (which relates events some months into the action) commences as follows: “You lost her gaze for a moment and your breath quickened, as when a dropped call across a distance gains unexpected gravity”.

The purpose of second person narration is partially revealed by the end of Open Water by which time it appears that the contents of the novel are really a long explanation taking Open Water into the realm of epistolary fiction. The long explanation has become a necessity for a relationship where, as in the words of George Benson’s This Masquerade, the parties had tried to talk it over but the words had got in the way.

More correctly in the case of the male protagonist, he could not find the words even to attempt to communicate the reasons why he could not communicate what his difficulties were.

Open Water is the story of a love affair, an intense but slow moving affair where the parties were convinced they were best friends before they were convinced that they could become lovers.   

But Open Water is also about being a young black person growing up in Britain. The male protagonist suffers from a form of stress illness associated with having witnessed and experienced police humiliation and violence directed at black men on a regular basis. He has also witnessed black men perpetrating violence upon other black men almost as a symptom of the pressure within which their lives are led. On a daily basis, he feels unsure, upon leaving home, about whether he will return. The impact is not only upon black men for mothers and sisters share the same uncertainty not knowing whether the farewell hug will be the last they share with their brother or their son.

Open Water, then, is about safe and unsafe places. Safety is not only about physical safety. It is about being seen and not seen. When a police officer, even on the streets of Dublin and not London, looks in your direction, as a black man, you know he does not see you but only sees an empty vessel, a stereotype of a black man devoid of everything you are as a unique human being. And when you are yelled at and made to lie on the ground at gun point and weight is put on your body and you are ordered to empty your pockets, even when you are allowed to go on your way and the police half apologise and say that they are only doing their duty, you know you have not been seen and that the pain of this most recent trauma will not go away,    

Both protagonists are British Ghanaian. He is a photographer who writes a little. She is a dancer. While Open Water is fiction, many of the incidental details reflect the course of Nelson’s life. Like the protagonist, he won a scholarship to go to a private, mainly white private school. Like the protagonist, he is a writer and a photographer. Like the protagonist, he is musically talented. And, like the protagonist, he has lost grandparents who played important roles in his life.

Open Water discusses music, photography, art and writing. Among the artists important to the protagonist are novelist, Zadie Smith and rapper, Kendrick Lamar. Each genre provides moments of freedom for the protagonist. In this way, Open Water is a tribute by Nelson on behalf of his generation to the generations of artists that preceded his. In this particular way, Open Water paints a beautiful and intimate picture of having recently grown up in London.

The open water of Open Water is about taking a risk and finding out whether one will be able to swim or not. When the female protagonist confesses her love, she is heading into open water. In a world where one is often looked at but not seen; where one struggles even to feel able to breathe, open water requires courage.

Will the protagonists find safety in their love? Will they be able to communicate sufficiently that will feel able to breath? Will they each be seen?