Open Water – the stunning debut novel by Caleb Azumah Nelson – is tender, painful and intensely moving. Here, we review the novel that has already earned the attention of Yaa Gyasi and Candice Carty-Williams.
There has been significant buzz around the release of Caleb Azumah Nelson’s debut novel Open Water, after Viking Books secured the rights in a nine-way auction and rightly so, this novel is a moving, painfully intimate portrayal of the intensity and complexity of young love. It is seared with poise – elegant writing that is pure poetry in Nelson’s thoughtful and delicate lexical choice – no word or sentence is wasted as the novel is pared back to reveal its raw vulnerability and heart.
Using the second person throughout, Nelson tells the story of two young Black British people meeting at a pub in South East London and connecting over their shared past – they both won scholarships private schools in which they struggled to belong and now are trying to make their mark on the city through their artistic pursuits. Tentatively and carefully, they fall in love, yet the violence and fear of the world and their experience of navigating the world as young Black Brits eventually seeks to divide them as they struggle to communicate the depth of their emotion both for each other and the difficulties of navigating through racism and fear. The novel is intense, emotional and painfully intimate in its portrayal of the characters, yet Nelson retains a sense of remove from the characters in order that we can judge them and their interactions from an external perspective. In this, there are hints of the kind of the kind of space between emptiness and yearning that Brandon Taylor captured so well in his 2020 novel – Real Life. More than anything, Open Water as a debut showcases an author who has already crafted an elegant and poetic writing style that is thoughtful and composed, creating layers of complexity in his writing that delves into deeper societal issues in a subtly unsettling way that creates deep impact. Open Water is an immaculately poised work that establishes Caleb Azumah Nelson as an author to watch out for in the coming years.
Pre-order the novel here now ahead of its release on the 4th February.
