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Open Water cover art

Open Water

By: Caleb Azumah Nelson
Narrated by: Caleb Azumah Nelson
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Summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

Winner of the Costa First Novel Award 2021

Winner of Debut of the Year at the British Book Awards 2022

Winner of Bad Form Book of the Year Award.

Number one best seller in The Times.

Shortlisted for Waterstones Book of the Year.

Longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize and the Gordon Burn Prize 2021.

A National Book Award '5 Under 35' Honoree.

Two young people meet at a pub in South East London. Both are Black British, both won scholarships to private schools where they struggled to belong, both are now artists—he a photographer, she a dancer—trying to make their mark in a city that by turns celebrates and rejects them. Tentatively, tenderly, they fall in love. But two people who seem destined to be together can still be torn apart by fear and violence.

At once an achingly beautiful love story and a potent insight into race and masculinity, Open Water asks what it means to be a person in a world that sees you only as a Black body, to be vulnerable when you are respected only for strength, to find safety in love, only to lose it. With gorgeous, soulful intensity, Caleb Azumah Nelson has written the most essential debut of recent years.

©2020 Caleb Azumah Nelson (P)2020 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"A tender and touching love story, beautifully told." (Observer 10 Best Debut Novelists of 2021)

"Hands-down the best debut I've read in years." (The Times

"A beautiful and powerful novel about the true and sometimes painful depths of love." (Candice Carty-Williams, best-selling author of Queenie

"An unforgettable debut...it's Sally Rooney meets Michaela Coel meets Teju Cole." (New York Times

"A love song to Black art and thought." (Yaa Gyasi, best-selling author of Homegoing and Transcendent Kingdom

What listeners say about Open Water

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Poetic writing style but falls short on plot

This writer definitely has a huge potential, but the way this book was written was quite frustrating. The writer alludes to so many really important themes throughout the book such as race relations in London, violence and imprisonment of young black men, the challenges of being black at private school- but most of these stories all take place in snippets of the protagonist’s thoughts and are are not satisfactorily explored in the main plot. Features of the main plot by contrast can seem repetitive and overwritten e.g. endless descriptions of taking various forms of public transport around London to meet a girl, and what seems like dozens of paragraphs spent describing what it feels like to smoke a cigarette while eating chicken and chips- all through a screen of metaphors. This novel would do better by ditching at least half of the love story, and descriptions of south London, and instead describing some of the themes of conflict in more detail which whilst alluded to, are never satisfactorily explored.

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10 people found this helpful

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    2 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

A lot of promise in places but lacking in any focus

Some flashes of interesting and engaging writing, with digressions on art and culture perhaps the highlights of this book, which centres less effectively on a quite pedestrian will-they won’t-they relationship. Unfortunately there is little to love or excite the reader here.

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5 people found this helpful

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Amazing

loved it beautifully written ,great story. A must read. The language is beautiful too Thanks

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3 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Learning to see, be seen and the differences between

Rarely, as an old white woman, do I find things to give me fresh and startling insights into worlds outside my own experiences with such beauty and clarity. This book is one of them. Please, everyone, listen to it or read it. Loved the skilful sense of admission (and permission to enter) a relationship blossoming amongst people not like me - young, black, male, beautiful, at ease with millennial technologies, by reminding me so powerfully of what it is to be young and to fall in love in a city. The way that the city is described so carefully as complicit in that experience, providing a kind of architecture for those emotions is intensely nostalgic - a human commonality that I could share and thereafter be primed to go on a journey into things at the outset I could not know, or truly understand. But I now I feel I understand a little more, that my initial generalised empathy and compassion is somehow more vividly in place. Thank you.

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2 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Breathtaking, hopeful, heartbreaking, beautiful.

Incredible portrayal of love, Blackness, racism, joy and yearning. I wanted to rewind and re listen to every sentence.

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2 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Very enjoyable, like enjoyable butter

Very wonderful to have listened to the author read it out himself. A treasured experience.

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2 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

One of the best books I’ve read in the last decade

Stylistics alone put this book at the top of its game, and I’m inclined not to write too much because the book speaks its own merit. A must read.

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2 people found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

beautifully told

Lovely story and so easy to listen (pretty much got through it in a day).

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2 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Phenomenal

I am swooned, I am moved, I am sad, I am happy, I am emotional, I basically felt everything listening to this book.

Open Water is written in a second person perspective and it's the story about two friends falling in love. I don't know the name of "You", but I don't need to. I still connected, empathised and rooted for him.

But, this isn't just a love story. This also focus on the struggles, the experience, grief and trauma of a young black man in British society.

Caleb talks about racism, discrimination, violence, trauma, grief, police violence...

It's about: "It's one thing being looked at and another to be seen".

The rhythm is just perfect! It's poetry, lyrical, it's art!
There are ao many good quotes, that I had to stop and go search for them. This will probably be the first book that I'll annotate, when I have the physical copy.

"“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.”

"You hide your whole self away because sometimes you forget you haven’t done anything wrong. Sometimes you forget there’s nothing in your pocket. Sometimes you forget that to be you is to be unseen and unheard, or it is to be seen and heard in ways you did not ask for. Sometimes you forget to be you is to be a Black body, and not much else."

I listened to the audiobook and just fell in love with Caleb's voice. I am pleased that I listened to the audio, I believe it was an overall better experience. Now...am I buying the physical copy? Absolutely!
Am I reading his other book? You can bet on it...I'll probably listen to the audio, as well.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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Poetic

An overwhelming feeling of nostalgia captured me througout this book - it took me to places of my youth, summer days,the feeling of being understood and misunderstood at the same time, finding your place and realising your ttuth.

Its poetic and emotive - beautifully written, love his use of language, theres a honest and relatable simplicity to it. It was a dream to listen to his voice.

He lives in the moment. His description of the black experience from rhe perspective of a young black male is powerful and emotive. It tells a different narrative from whats always in the media. Its senstive and touching and heart wrenching. I loved way he expressed male vulnerability - beautifully done. This novel will say with me.

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1 person found this helpful