Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson

Published 2021 · 208 pages · 42,176 words · about 5 hours at an average pace · Fiction, Literary Fiction, Romance

How hard is Open Water to read?

Open Water scores 74 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it very challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.

Vocabulary: 68 out of 100
The prose employs an elevated, literary vocabulary, occasionally incorporating specialized terms from music ("808," "hi-hat," "chopped and screwed") and critical theory ("species body," "re-subordination"). While generally accessible, the language is precise and often metaphorical, demanding careful attention to nuance rather than presenting outright obscure words.
Sentence structure: 65 out of 100
The narrative features a mix of direct, impactful sentences and longer, flowing constructions that often use semicolons and cumulative clauses to build rhythm and connect complex ideas. Passages like the narrator's repeated desires ("You wanted to carve a home... You wanted to stretch...") demonstrate a demanding, yet navigable, poetic syntax.
Abstraction: 82 out of 100
The book consistently elevates concrete experiences into profound philosophical and theoretical explorations, particularly concerning themes of Blackness, identity, trauma, and freedom. Nearly every event, from a barbershop visit to a police encounter, serves as a springboard for deep introspection, drawing on critical race theory concepts (e.g., "rendering the Black body as a species body") and existential questions.
Information density: 78 out of 100
The text is exceptionally dense, layering personal narrative, emotional states, and a rich tapestry of cultural and musical allusions (e.g., Baldwin, Kendrick, Zadie Smith, Saidiya Hartman). The constant interplay between present action, memory, and abstract reflection, often within single paragraphs, requires sustained attention to fully grasp the interwoven concepts and references.
Narrative indirection: 72 out of 100
The 'you' narration creates an intimate yet indirect experience, often blurring the lines between the protagonist's internal thoughts, direct address to the woman, and rhetorical questions posed to the reader. The narrative frequently requires readers to infer emotional states and motivations, connecting fragmented memories and unspoken desires to present actions. This constant implication, particularly around vulnerability and societal pressures, places it higher than *The Great Gatsby* (65) but less opaque than *Flights* (78).
Symbolic density: 82 out of 100
The text is rich with recurring motifs and metaphors that carry significant meaning beyond their literal presence, such as 'open water' representing vulnerability and freedom, 'seeds' symbolizing desire and growth, and 'the house of my father' embodying generational trauma and identity. Music, rhythm, and dance serve as central allegories for connection, self-expression, and protest. This pervasive symbolic layer, where almost every significant image or action resonates with deeper thematic concerns, places it well above *The Great Gatsby* (75) and comparable to *To the Lighthouse* (82).
Ironic distance: 75 out of 100
The narrative employs significant ironic distance, particularly through the repeated phrase 'nothing happened' following moments of intense intimacy or emotional breakthrough, highlighting the protagonist's suppression and societal expectations. This deliberate understatement creates a gap between the literal words and the profound emotional reality, inviting the reader to recognize the unspoken truths. While not satirical like *The Sellout* (85), the irony functions similarly to *Lolita* (75) in requiring the reader to interpret against the narrator's stated position.
Resolution withholding: 78 out of 100
The narrative consistently resists definitive closure, particularly regarding the protagonist's emotional state, the future of his relationship, and the resolution of his internal and external conflicts. The ending, with the protagonist seeking forgiveness and the woman reflecting on their fractured love, emphasizes ongoing processes of healing and understanding rather than a neat conclusion. This open-endedness, where core questions about love, identity, and safety remain in flux, is more pronounced than *The Great Gatsby* (60) but less existentially unresolved than *Crying of Lot 49* (75).
Structural complexity: 65 out of 100
The novel employs a non-linear structure, frequently jumping between present moments, vivid flashbacks, and imagined future conversations or memories, often within the same chapter. The consistent 'you' narration, while maintaining a single focal point, shifts its address and internalizes much of the action, creating a stream-of-consciousness flow that requires constant reader reorientation. This, combined with the episodic nature of the chapters and the interweaving of internal and external realities, creates a moderately complex reading experience, more intricate than *The Great Gatsby* (55) but less formally experimental than *Midnight's Children* (68).

How Open Water is regarded

Open Water holds a literary regard score of 50 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.

Where Open Water sits in Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism

Placed by a full reading of the text (79 passages), not from reputation. Each verdict quotes the passage that earned it. On the axis from myth to irony, Open Water scores 66 out of 100. A second mythos, comedy, pulls at it with a weight of 0.25. About the map of stories.

Mode: Low Mimetic
It’s summer now. You’re working in NikeTown, on Oxford Circus, supplementing your money from photography.
Symbol: Formal
You have always thought if you opened your mouth in open water you would drown, but if you didn’t open your mouth you would suffocate.
Mythos: Tragic Pathos (Irony phase 4) (irony iv)
You ache. You ache all over. You are aching to be you, but you’re scared of what it means to do so.
Genre: Confession + Novel
You came here to speak of what it means to love your best friend.

Where the story of Open Water takes place

  • South-east London, central London and Dublin, 2017-2019 (2017 to 2019), the main setting
  • Childhood, schooldays and Ghana memories, 1993-2016 (1993 to 2016)

5 things that are true of Open Water, with the passage for each

  1. At their first meeting the narrator reaches to shake the woman's hand and then goes in for a hug, producing a flapping of arms.

    you first reached to shake her hand, before opening up for the usual wide embrace, the result an awkward flapping of your arms.

  2. The two meet in a bar in central London two days before the end of 2017.

    You and the woman meet in a bar, two days before 2017 comes to a close.

  3. The narrator helps the woman dye her hair blonde the night before Carnival Sunday.

    You don a glove and help ease the dye across her soft scalp, once, twice, until the desired colour is reached.

  4. The barber gives the narrator a copy of Chancellor Williams's The Destruction of Black Civilization.

    You read the cover: The Destruction of Black Civilization by Chancellor Williams.

  5. In the final chapter, written from her point of view, the woman has bought an old 35mm camera.

    She bought a camera, one like yours, an old 35mm.

Scenes in Open Water that Frye would name

53 sightings of Frye's terms in the text. The strongest:

Katabasis, untitled
You’re descending at a hellish pace but there’s no fire here, the fire brought you here. The joint outside the barbershop sends him into a dream underworld of dogs, water and a monster.
Hamartia, untitled
You push, knowing it’s easier to retreat than showing her something raw and vulnerable. His withdrawal from her is the fatal misstep that breaks the relationship.
Agon, untitled
They don’t hear your protests. They don’t hear your voice. They don’t hear you. They don’t see you. The stop-and-search outside his friend's house is a contest in which he is powerless to be seen.
Cognitio, untitled
She has swum out into open water, and it is not long before you join her. Their mutual declaration of love on the steps is the comic recognition that rejoins the friends.
Agon, untitled
The chaos is immediate. Every man is on his feet. The window smashes and armed men demand Daniel inside the barbershop, then police arrive: a double confrontation.
Pathos, untitled
You have known him by many names, but today he was Daniel. Daniel's death after the scream and the bike on its side is the book's sacrificial scene.

Books that share these scenes with Open Water

About the author

Caleb Azumah Nelson