Review: Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson
Open Water Portrays Blackness with the Subtlety and Energy of the Lovers that Live within its Pages
Two lovers embrace one another, attempting to find peace and harmony despite the constant, rattling determination of the outside world to threaten and conquer them. Caleb Azumah Nelson has captured a portrayal that is both unbending and unapologetic. Blackness is neither deified nor detested. It is simply allowed to be. Freedom is at the core of this novel. The question of whether liberty is possible within suppression is something that Nelson dwells upon, and he portrays beautifully through words and the moments when that liberty is afforded to Black men and women. These moments come under all different guises, whether they be music, dance, art or sport.
Open Water follows the main character and his love interest, both of whom remain unnamed. The narrative follows them through the trials and tribulations of everyday Blackness, their love story is set against a backdrop of both turmoil and joy, and the lovers are able to find both solace and a challenging pleasure in each other. The narrative itself is not necessarily linear. Rather we follow the characters through the seasons, their paths undulating and eddying like the changes in the weather. Whilst the love between these two characters is the defining theme of this novel, Open Water also gives its readers an in-depth analysis of how it can feel to be Black in today’s Britain, and the everyday hostility that can haunt Black people within the United Kingdom.
Art and novels permeate the narrative, Zadie Smith is quoted in the epigraph and quotes from her novel NW repeatedly surface. They are a cultural reminder, something that grounds the reader in a context that can be understood, a context following on from the canon of Black British literature. The book is also enveloped in music, from Isaiah Rashad to Solange, with each scene practically prefaced by whatever’s playing, whether that be through headphones or a wisp of melody re-entering a character’s mind. Due to this, Open Water never feels alien, or unrecognisable. Instead, it is comforting and warm yet refreshing. You find yourself smiling at the pages, resonating. That feeling of representation is crucial, especially as the experience of seeing oneself as a Black person within a novel is so rare. Nelson, therefore, creates a space where a Black reader’s feelings are neither overlooked nor insulted, but the readers are able simply to enjoy the experience conjured up by this book. The author’s rendering feels neither persecutory nor falsely celebratory, the narrative, like the readers, is allowed to simply be. Feeling safe is an important part of this work and finding one’s own space in which one can thrive. What is most impressive is that Nelson has managed to create that impression throughout the book itself. When reading the references, you think yes, yes I do feel safe here, yes, I can recognise this, and I am grateful to Nelson for portraying the reality of so many.
Open Water exposes the intricacies, the murkiness and the lack of understanding. Not only of being Black but of being in love. To live under oppression is to live in fear and mistrust, and yet you still want to give your best to another, to open yourself up for understanding in that wide expanse of water. The tears described in this book are so often silent; characters cry quietly, or only the remnant of a tear running down their cheek is described. There is an inability on the character’s part to fully express their sadness or misery. Rather they remain tightly wound and fiercely protective of themselves. To show weakness is to expose vulnerability. As Nelson says in the book, in an oft-repeated line: “What you’re trying to say is that it’s easier for you to hide in your own darkness, than emerge cloaked in your own vulnerability.” How does one cry when one isn’t really seen? How does one live without being noticed? It is that invisibility that Nelson captures, the feeling that you are being looked through, and the joy at finding someone that sees.
Initially, when reading, I thought that there had to be a level of separation, that the narrative would focus on the love, or Blackness, but not the two together. This was my own mistake. My idea that Blackness was too heavy, too all-encompassing not to dominate, ignored the fact that love and Blackness are inseparable. I had never realised before reading Open Water how simple and yet how evasive this concept is. So many different labels are hung upon the notion of Blackness, and yet none of them can succinctly capture Black people living as they are, being who they are. Nelson has portrayed that message. He has done so kindly, poignantly and to be Black, is something that I am going to embrace even further from this point forward.
To be Black is portrayed from Nelson’s perspective here, and that perspective is bolstered by the stability of his characters. The two lovers are both artists, they are well versed in music, they both attended private schools, and they have cultural capital. I wonder if someone who hasn’t had access to those privileges would still find Open Water a joyous read, or more a study in cruel irony. Undoubtedly the state of being Black can connect people across classes, but as the protagonist of Open Water watches as a young Black man is nearly beaten up in a barber shop, there is an element of voyeurism. The main character is always watching other young Black men being subjected to hostility, yes he remembers moments when he has experienced it himself, but there is a disconnect between him and other Black men, that at times is unsettling. When he initially meets his female counterpart, she is in fact dating someone else. From the outset, there is an element of their love that is stolen, and that theft is described in a way that gratifies the main character’s masculinity. The Black man whom she was with before she meets the protagonist, fades quietly into the background.
From my perspective, reading Open Water as a young Black woman, I am overjoyed that it exists. The ability to articulate feelings is something incredible, to express emotion through the written word, and Nelson could not have better expressed some of the thoughts and feelings surrounding present-day Black British youth. The heady mix of freedom and fear, joy and hopelessness. It is all here, shrouded within the difficult yet beautiful moments of love, and lovelessness, and infatuation. Through the pages of the novel, the world is forced away, forced into the distance, so that the Black couple can survive together, and thrive. We as readers are brought into the lovers’ intimacies, surrounded by their essences, and so the unbending realities of their race are for an instant, dissolved into the backgrounds of their lives.
Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson is available to purchase at Sevenoaks a Black-owned independent bookshop.
Connections, links and love, Open Water, breaks through the unending impossibilities of Blackness and articulates the felt but never said…