Waiting for the bus in the darkness, you pull on the hoody. It smells like her: sweet like the torn petal of a flower, sweet like lavender plucked from its stem while in summer bloom. You put your headphones on and load up Kelsey Lu’s EP, Church, an album full of orchestral loops designed to reach towards a quiet ecstasy. You could be anywhere right now, your eyes closed, enveloped in her presence, which is heavier in her absence. But you are home, amongst the melody, slipping into percussive breaks, breathing easy.
page 45
Table of Contents
Why Open Water?
Open Water was recommended to me by the same friend that recommended The AI Con. There’s going to be more books along those lines in the future. This particular book interested me because it is a contemporary romance with the stylings of literary fiction.
That is a combination that is always going to pique my interest as someone who enjoys a good romance but also wants a bit of literary fiction flair to the writing style. Less the rom-com style of First-Time Caller and more of the heart crushing yearning of something like This Is How You Lose the Time War or We Could Be So Good.
This is my first time reading anything by Caleb Azumah Nelson and this is also the author’s debut novel.
Let’s get into it.
The Book
Open Water is strange. Right from the start, it is obvious that while the book is tagged as contemporary romance, it is not like other contemporary romances. The book is written in second person, which is in itself is very unusual, not just for romance but just in general. This is the second book I’ve read that made use of second person narration style. The first being The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez.
In addition to the second person narration, there are very few named characters. In fact, the main two characters are never named. The male main character (MMC) is always referred to as “you” and the female main character (FMC) is always referred to as “she/her”. The few characters that are named are basically there as plot and character development vehicles for our two main characters.
This set of stylistic choices meant that this book felt a lot more intimate than other romances I have read in the past. In using the second person unnamed main character, I felt that I was the main character and that I was in his mind, thinking these thoughts and feeling these feelings. Oh, and what intense thoughts and feelings they were.
One other notable stylistic choice was that Open Water is written in a poetic or even an almost lyrical style, like a novel size love song. This is emphasized by the numerous references to songs and albums throughout the book – Afraid of Us by Jonwayne, Junie by Solange, The Low End Theory by A Tribe Called Quest, Boy in Da Corner by Dizzee Rascal, Blonde by Frank Ocean.
All of these references don’t feel out of place in the book. The book uses these references to music, movies, books to give the world a sense of solidity. Open Water is set mostly in London, UK with brief interludes in Dublin, Ireland. The book does a wonderful job setting the scene, I could visualize the various spaces in London that the main character inhabited, the Caribbean takeaway, the London subway, the trains, the coffee shops and bars.
Thematically speaking, there is also a fair amount happening in this book as well. There is of course the romance but the book is very much focused on the fact that these are two Black people falling in love. The spectre of police violence against Black bodies is a core part of this book, it is one of the MMC’s fears. The trauma of such violence is ever present in the MMC’s thoughts and thus the story.
There is also grief, the death of grandparents in far away Ghana. The strangeness of the grief that comes with distance and time. A certain scene on pages 66-67 reminded me of the last conversation I had with my father and I was not quite ready for this book to tackle the subject of long-distance grief so well. It left me reeling and I’ve been thinking about it ever since.
To be you is to apologize and often that apology comes in the form of suppression. That suppression is indiscriminate. That suppression knows not when it will spill. ​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. Not better, but easier. However, the longer you hold it in, the more likely you are to suffocate. ​At some point you must breathe.
page 67
Open Water makes use of three key interrelated metaphors – suppression, spillage, and the titular open water. All of these are related in the sense that suppression is about the suppression of the main character’s true feelings and desires, spillage is the eventual release of these feelings and desires and open water is what our MMC and FMC are in. Suppression leads to drowning in open water and spillage is painful but ultimately healing.
I loved this book. I loved inhabiting the spaces the two main characters were in. I loved falling in love like the MMC did, I felt his desires and yearning intensely in my heart. I felt his grief, and sadness. I felt his doubts, fears, and misgivings.. For a brief moment I became the MMC of this book and that is the highest compliment I can give this book.
Concluding Thoughts
Open Water is short, sweet, and a little bit painful. Just what a good romance story should be. For a book that is only 166 pages, it packs quite the wallop. I think this book’s story will stick in my mind for a while and it is especially impressive for a book that has unnamed main characters with second person narration. That alone would be an impressive feat but the book did more than that. Just sublime.
I’ll leave y’all with one more quote from the book.
You feel her turn beside you. You wonder how long this moment could stretch for, and how much it could contain: you, her, the soft rush of cars speeding in the darkness, the gaze, seeing each other here, her heartbeat near audible, before she says, ‘I love you, you know?’ ​She has swum out into open water, and it is not long before you join her. ​You take but a moment before saying, ‘I love you too.’
page 91
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