Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson

Open Water is a beautiful, slow-burning love story and a touching narrative about two young, talented Black-British arts students who feel an intense connection, begin a friendship and later navigate a romantic relationship. The romantic narrative is undercut by their individual fears and past traumas which result in them folding inwards and away from one another, rather than admitting to their pain.

This novella is successful and most impactful in its contrast of intimate joy and Black success - (explored through references to music and the arts) - with its uneasy, claustrophobic feel, as it describes ongoing institutional violence against young, black men in the city, how this dampens their freedom and results in a perpetual, malingering fear held by the Black Community.

Furthermore, the novella explores how the anguish and anger resulting from systemic oppression and violent trauma is continually repressed as a mechanism for self-preservation, so as to protect the narrator from further mistreatment or perceived criminality within the system, and how this can be damaging to mental health and the romantic relationship over time.

I didn’t connect much with the second-person narrative stylistically, because I felt this limited the characterisation a little - I almost wanted the ability of a third-person narrative to flesh out the protagonist’s conscious AND subconscious behaviours, and I would have liked to gain more insight into the female character’s inner voice too, but, I but can appreciate the stylistic intention to build empathy for the narrator by seeing the world through his eyes here and I also appreciate this may be influenced by the authors’ own experience given the footnote to ‘Es’, which may lend to this self-reflective style.

Great to discover a new author.