This book is about love and how it feels to be drawn so magnetically to someone when you fall in love. Nelson so vividly describes that feeling of falling for someone, where the characters are so drawn together it is almost magnetic and their lives are whirling together.
That even if they wanted to stop what was happening they couldn’t, love is a riptide.
This book is also about fear, fear of dying of never being safe on the streets. Fear of being attacked and killed and what living in fear does to you and your family. Fear of the police who are supposed to be there to protect you, but target you.
The feeling of never being free, never knowing what might happen to you when you step outside.
Living like that puts a shield up around you that is hard to emotionally penetrate. How that shapes everything in the characters lives, no matter what.
You pray every day that today is not that day.
Nelson marries the two themes so beautifully together, and wraps them both around life in London. Bringing the vibrancy, life and fear of the streets to the story. The writing feels almost lyrical at times, and the book has songs woven in throughout. Songs that have feelings and memories and importance to the main character.
The second person writing does take a bit if getting used to, it feels although it allows the story to be separated a further step from Nelson.

An amazing debut, beautifully written. One I already want to read again.

Wonderful debut. Beautiful words and language. This is one of those unique stories you won’t forget soon.

It's been two days since I finished Open Water and I still can't stop thinking about it.

In his flawless debut Caleb explores themes of love, the complexities of relationships and the intimacy they require and the subject of masculinity and mental health.

And it's done beautifully. So much so that Caleb's prose reads like poetry. I kept finding myself rereading lines just to feel them all over again.

The references in this book had me straight away. Music features heavily throughout, creating a soundtrack that lives alongside the writing so seemlessly that you almost don't notice how integral it is to the protagonist's sense of self and togetherness. Alongside the music, this book is riddled with references to Peckhamplex, Notting Hill carnival and popular, landmark entertainment. A book about the culture.

These familiarities meant I held Open Water so close to my heart that I wasn't really ready for it to end. I can't recommend it enough, and I can't wait to big up whatever Caleb writes next.

Open Water by @caleb_anelson is pure poetry, a beautiful tender, rhythmic, romantic, slow-paced; like a heartbeat. His writing style is so versatile, incisive & meaningful, it touched the deepest core of my heart.
This book is not simply about two black young students, one a photographer another a dancer, who fall in & out of love but so much more.
Calib has poured out his feelings, exposed his insecurities, emotions, sentiments, rage, anger, confusion, love, passion in such a way that I wanna hug him.....tight! And tell him that you made me cry, my heart is broken 💔 but you have also given me hope to hang in there.
He talks about the blackness & being black, racism & everything about it, the enslavement & freedom, vulnerability & immunity, the powerlessness & power, the life and death.
Gosh!!! I loved loved loved it! A stunning debut novel to be published in 2021. 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
Thank you #netgalley #penguinuk @vikingbooksuk for the ARC in exchange for an honest review of #openwaterbook by #calebazumahnelson.
"𝐈𝐭𝐬 𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐢𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐨 𝐡𝐢𝐝𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐝𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬, 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝐭𝐨 𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐫𝐠𝐞 𝐧𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐝, & 𝐯𝐮𝐥𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞, 𝐛𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐧 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐨𝐰𝐧𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭" A stunning debut

It's hard to believe this is a debut novel at times. The way the author wielded the English language gave me a different level of appreciation for reading. Beautiful poetry-like text gave the whole book a rhythm. It played along on a beat just like the music referenced so often within it.

I came to this book straight after reading 'Kindred' by Octavia Butler and am left with the reminder that we've come a long way since the 1800s but in some ways, not that far at all.

It let me see through the eyes of a young Black person and broke my heart in so many ways. It educated me about the harshness that daily life can bring just from the colour of a person's skin. But it also told me a love story about finding someone who matches your rhythm. About the love of people around you and the kinship you can find with a stranger.

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Thank you to the NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for my honest review

I adored this. I got so invested in the setting and the characters. It felt so relatable and vulnerable at the same time. fantastic.

A raw, poetic, gutting exploration of love. of race. of masculinity. of violence. of london. and of our modern age.

Open Water tells the story of two young black south-east londoners - referred to as “you” and “her” - a device that makes this both a detached and deeply intimate read all at once. They love each other in a way that doesn’t have words and Nelson tells us, so gorgeously, about the time they spend together over the span of around a year. But it’s also about the weight of growing up young black and male in south east london with the police looking over you and boys you grew up with bleeding out on the pavement.

Nelson’s writing is truly lyrical - the beautiful subtle poetry of his words left me genuinely bereft in parts. Reading about such an intense, fervid love from the perspective of a young man, a young black man, was refreshing and revelatory to me and is something we don’t get enough of. What a heartache and a joy to read.

Sheer unadulterated violence, potent love and suffocating anxiety collide in this stunning novel, making the whole thing feel like an intensely, painfully personal account of one young man’s inner turmoil. An account that we are blessed to be given access to.

What a gut-wrenching and mesmerising debut.

There's a real sense of tenderness and vulnerability articulated in this short piece of writing but there's also an awkwardness that perhaps makes it feel a bit unfinished. The 2nd person narrative works to create intimacy but the interspersed Black theory (Zadie Smith, Kei Miller, Teju Cole) feels spliced in with too strong an artifice. It's good, though, to see this challenging social and gendered race cliches - a writer to watch for the freshness of vision.

Open Water is a novel about two people falling in and out of love, and the impact of race and how you're viewed in society. A man and a woman with a lot in common—both black British artists who got scholarships to predominantly white private schools—meet in south-east London. They become friends and, slowly, lovers, but their story is tied up with wider realities of race, masculinity, and fear, and the vulnerability of being known.

This is a tender and incisive novel, written in a distinctively poetic second person style with unnamed main characters. It is full of pop culture references and geographical touch points that make it feel very real, though the writing also has a kind of sweeping unreality as you follow their love story. Most of all, Open Water feels like the story of softness in a hard world, and the complexity of love when you must exist in the wider world, and the elements all come together to make it feel like you got a lot from such a short novel.

Caleb Azumah Nelson takes a story of a young man and woman falling in and out of love and gives it a philosophical, political, and poetic edge that feels insightful and exciting. It's a book you can read in one sitting and deserves to be a hyped debut novel (you can imagine the TV adaptation too).

This is a really wonderful, poetic, natural and totally believable short novel about an on and off relationship between two black friends in London. It’s infused with cultural references which make it feel all the more real. Music, restaurants, TV shows and movies all add to the tale, which is simple but very effective.
The prose is often beautiful and has a constant ring of truth. By the end of it I felt like the characters were people I knew.