📕 Open Water
In an era where literature continually seeks to bridge the expanses of human emotion and experience, “Open Water” by Caleb Azumah Nelson emerges as a exploration of intimacy, identity, and the unspoken complexities that weave through the tapestry of contemporary life.
Nelson crafts a narrative that invites readers into a space where love and vulnerability intersect with the societal constructs of race and masculinity.
About the book
| Author: | Caleb Azumah Nelson |
| Year of release: | 2021 |
| Genre: | Fiction, Romance, Contemporary, Literary, Adult, Race, Novella |
| Pages: | 145 |
| Average WPM: | 333 |
| Date Started/Finished: | 11 to 13-September-2022 |
| Time took: | 1.66 Hours |
How I Discovered It
Randomly on good reads
Top Quotes
Donatien Grau’s words: When the mind is lost in ecstasy, there is no condition for self-reflection, self-questioning.
It’s one thing to be looked at, and another to be seen; you’re scared that she might not just see your beauty, but your ugly too.
Summary + Notes
Epigraph
There was an inevitability about their road towards one another which encouraged meandering along the route. - Zadie Smith
Prologue
It is a strange thing, to desire your best friend; two pairs of hands wandering past boundaries, asking forgiveness rather than permission: ‘Is this OK?’ coming a fraction after the motion.
Chapter 6
Your house is too quiet, or rather it is loud in the absence of others.
Chapter 7
You dial for your father, but you know he will not have the words. He will hide behind a guise, he will tell you to be a man. He will not tell you how much he hurts too, even though you can hear the shiver in the timbre of his voice.
Chapter 11
Donatien Grau’s words: When the mind is lost in ecstasy, there is no condition for self-reflection, self-questioning.
Chapter 12
They see someone, but that person is not you.
Chapter 13
To give desire a voice is to give it a body through which to breathe and live. It is to admit and submit to something which is on the outer limits of your understanding.
Chapter 16
To not fill your time with someone is to trust, and to trust is to love.
Chapter 18
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It’s one thing to be looked at and another to be seen.
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It’s one thing to be looked at, and another to be seen; you’re scared that she might not just see your beauty, but your ugly too.
Chapter 28
This is not an overstatement. You are dying. You young boys are dying. You kill your mothers in the process. The grief makes them tired. The effort makes them tired. This living is precarious. Imagine leaving your house and not knowing if you will return intact. You do not need to imagine. You live precarious. You cool, you real cool, playing it cool. Keeping it real, cool, until – Sigh into the darkness.
Chapter 29
Same summer. You’re in Spain, on a beach where, on a clear day, you can see the shores of Morocco, when Frank Ocean’s album, Blonde, drops from the sky. This is not a drill. You’ve been waiting for something you didn’t know you needed. When it comes, you take a pair of headphones, a folding beach seat, and stumble down the sand, watching the tide roll in and out. You can’t remember knowing a stillness like this, and perhaps it’s now, caught between looking forwards and looking back, you realize you’re looking for it once more.
Chapter 30
When the photo is developed, she’s sure, if you look closely, you’ll see the shadows cast across your skin, the eyes both seeing her and seeing the world, the honesty resting calmly on your features. If you look closely, you might see a tear making a journey from eye to cheek, as you cry for her. If you look closely, you’ll see what she has always seen, what she always will: you.