Open Water

The barbershop was strangely quiet. Only the dull buzz of clippers shearing soft scalps. That was before the barber caught you watching her reflection in the mirror as he cut her hair, and saw something in her eyes too. He paused and turned towards you, his dreads like thick beautiful roots dancing with excitement as he spoke.

This is the first paragraph of Caleb Azumah Nelson’s first novel, Open Water. Its ‘quiet’ opening is about the physical - scalps, hair, dreads - but also about a something that is beyond, as the barber, his hair dancing with excitement, catches sight of ‘you’, the narrator, indirectly gazing at ‘her’ via the mirror, and addresses them both:

You two are in something. I don’t know what it is, but you guys are in something.

The story of this novel is just that: exactly what is the something? A short, intense book, it captures the experience of two unnamed young people falling for each other but holding back as long as they can, knowing that what will happen will change them forever. Their coming together is tentative. The second person narration (notoriously difficult to sustain) is impressively poised, the 'you' holding the narrator from the emotional rawness at a short necessary distance (and he is a photographer, also at a distance from his subjects, gazing through a viewfinder, in what you think is a perfect position). 

Though Dublin briefly features (as ‘her’ home), it is London that dominates the book, evoked through its streets, clubs and music. It’s a city for young lovers on the edge of promise, making off-the-cuff decisions about which bar to catch an Uber to, dancing sensually in a club basement, enjoying city-living in summer - a life we’re all missing right now, whatever country we’re in.

But the lyricism is often undercut by a rarely-stilled existential dread, the wariness of a young Black man in a society permeated by racism:

They tell you there has been a spate of robberies in the area. They say many residents describe a man fitting your description. They ask where you are going and where you have come from. They say you appeared out of nowhere. Like magic, almost. They don’t hear your protests. They don’t hear your voice. They don’t hear you. They don’t see you. They see someone, but that person is not you.

Fitting your description … guess what that means.

Walking towards the cinema, you pass a police van. They aren’t questioning you or her but glance in your direction. With this act, they confirm what you already know: that your videos are not your own … That night, you dream the police wrote your death story and only included your name as a footnote.

Zadie Smith is quoted in the epigraph (my thoughts on her short collection of essays, Intimations), and she makes a cameo appearance at a signing for N-W:

‘There was an inevitability about their road towards one another which encouraged meandering along the route.’

The lovers’ journey does indeed meander:

You play this game with each other, in which the stakes are far too high, on the sofa, in her kitchen, in her hallway; you wanting to make a journey, she wanting to do the same but making a diversion before the destination. 

Each is aware that moving from this river out into ‘open water’ risks drowning, so they take their time (unsurprisingly, late in the book, things go wrong):

Besides, sometimes, to resolve desire, it’s better to let the thing bloom. To feel this thing, to catch you unaware, to hold onto the ache. What is better than believing you are heading towards love?

In the Irish Times recently, Sarah Gilmartin (in an otherwise positive review) made some critical remarks: firstly about the style:

The lyricism of the prose and the use of rhetorical devices are more suited to poetry or polemic than to fiction. At times the insights feel trite, the language hokey, like fortune cookie advice:

and then the plot:

The biggest issue with ‘Open Water’ is that it is too short on action for a novel. Most of the book sees the character reflecting in his head.

The first comment has some validity, but this is a lyrical book by a young man about an intense experience, and those occasional moments are part of his true voice. The rhetorical devices are often echoes of the ways music loops back to motifs (the 145 pages of the book are saturated by music - see below). The second comment I strongly disagree with: if we are going to apply short on action as a bar for fiction to jump, an awful lot of the great novels of the past are going to fall short. In any case, there is plenty of ‘action’, especially in the sickening incidents of racism. And most of the book sees the character reflecting in his head? Nick Carraway in Gatsby?

Sarah Gilmartin finishes her review:

Azumah Nelson is clearly a talented writer who may need further time to perfect the form. In the meantime, we have a worthy book, one that is both political and personal, that speaks its important message out to the world.

Well, every novelist tries to ‘perfect’ the form throughout his or her career, and probably most of them think they do not succeed. ‘Worthy’ makes the book sound dull, a work of mere ‘messages’, but for me it was just immensely pleasurable.

(END)

There is a handy Spotify playlist with some of the music from the book. Below, the lovely ‘Piano Joint (This Kind of Love)’ by Michael Kiwanuka. Listen to the author interviewed on a recent BBC Radio ‘Open Book’.