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Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi
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Freshwater (original 2018; edition 2018)

by Akwaeke Emezi (Author)

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1,1114917,967 (4.02)50
An extraordinary debut novel, Freshwater explores the surreal experience of having a fractured self. It centers around a young Nigerian woman, Ada, who develops separate selves within her as a result of being born "with one foot on the other side." Unsettling, heartwrenching, dark, and powerful, Freshwater is a sharp evocation of a rare way of experiencing the world, one that illuminates how we all construct our identities. Ada begins her life in the south of Nigeria as a troubled baby and a source of deep concern to her family. Her parents, Saul and Saachi, successfully prayed her into existence, but as she grows into a volatile and splintered child, it becomes clear that something went terribly awry. When Ada comes of age and moves to America for college, the group of selves within her grows in power and agency. A traumatic assault leads to a crystallization of her alternate selves: Asụghara and Saint Vincent. As Ada fades into the background of her own mind and these selves, now protective, now hedonistic, move into control, Ada's life spirals in a dark and dangerous direction. Narrated from the perspective of the various selves within Ada, and based in the author's realities, Freshwater explores the metaphysics of identity and mental health, plunging the reader into the mystery of being and self. Freshwater dazzles with ferocious energy and serpentine grace, heralding the arrival of a fierce new literary voice.… (more)
Member:RekhainBC
Title:Freshwater
Authors:Akwaeke Emezi (Author)
Info:Grove Press (2018), Edition: 1st Edition, 240 pages
Collections:Your library
Rating:****
Tags:None

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Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi (2018)

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» See also 50 mentions

Showing 1-5 of 48 (next | show all)
3.75. This novel is reaching for so much and playing with such interesting stuff. It is immersive and vivid and sometimes genuinely cracked open the ontological framework my brain spends most of its time in in really interesting ways. I have some qualms about its success as a novel, as that specific kind of storytelling, that unit of art. To be fair, that is definitely one of the things Emezi deliberately deprioritized--I'm just not sure it's quite for me. I liked this a lot but wanted to like it more, maybe. ( )
  localgayangel | Mar 5, 2024 |
Note: Overdrive e-book version omits a bunch of non-Latin letters if you don't let it set its own font. I learned this with [b:My Sister, the Serial Killer|38819868|My Sister, the Serial Killer|Oyinkan Braithwaite|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1523366732l/38819868._SY75_.jpg|60394238] and then promptly forgot, only remembering after I finished. Goddamnit.

3.5*, rounded up because I'm feeling generous today, but it really could go either way.

In the broad strokes I liked this---both a quick, engaging read and made some really interesting artistic choices. I'm less certain all those choices were successful. The most obvious one is use of foreshadowing: Emezi leans hard on "X had no way of knowing how big a mistake that would turn out to be!" in order to whip up an atmosphere of foreboding, perilousness, and tragedy. It gets noticeably repetitive, and sometimes the promised comeuppance doesn't actually happen (e.g. the story of the python in the bathroom...?). It also weirdly flattens some of the big emotional moments in Ada's life, where you already know a lot about what's going to happen (e.g. the end of Ada's marriage) by the time it actually happens, and then Emezi has to dribble in new details to actually make the pain/despair of the moment felt. (Vague spoilers: The student loans thing really got me. It's a concrete manifestation of the destruction and devastation on everyone in the blast radius that we're otherwise told about more distantly---say, breaking the older brother's heart. The loans are a distant way to put it, too, just more concrete than breaking boys' hearts. ...and around and around I go!)

I think one could make an argument for heavy foreshadowing as an intentional stylistic choice, since the story's being told by a chorus of narrators/heavily influenced by oral storytelling and folktales, but... IDK, you know? Bouncing around temporally this way took some of the sting out of the most brutal moments (there are a lot and they are quite explicit, just FYI), and I'm not sure if it was supposed to do that or no. ( )
  caedocyon | Feb 22, 2024 |
A tough 4.5 stars. Only .5 less because of how it was like just an iota hard to get into in the beginning and some parts were sufficiently triggering. But overall I loved it ( )
  the.lesbian.library | Jan 15, 2024 |
Series Info/Source: This is a stand alone book. I borrowed a copy of this on audiobook from the library.

Thoughts: I listened to this book on audiobook and the narration was well done. This book was more on the poetic-literary side and the story feels very ambiguous at times. It was well done but has way more violence and sex than I was expecting. At times it feels like the whole story is revolving around Ada having violent sexual encounters with people. The premise is interesting but I felt like some of this was a bit over the top and repetitive.

The story focuses on Ada, a girl supposedly prayed into existence that has two gods sleeping in her soul. Ada uses various measures to keep the gods quiet and subdued (mostly self-harm) and that seems to work, allowing Ada to live a quiet life. That is until college where she is traumatically assaulted by her boyfriend. When this happens the god Asughara takes over Ada's body to protect Ada from the violence. At this point we hear from Asughara more, as Asughara enjoys having a body and likes throwing Ada into traumatic violent sexual situations. As Asughara starts to tear Ada's life apart, another god rears its head in the form of Saint Vincent. Saint Vincent is calming and loving but wants Ada to have a more androgynous body. Ada starts to realize these gods are ruining her life more than they are helping and struggles to figure out who she is.

This book has a heavy dose of magical realism to it. You are never quite sure if Ada is actually struggling with gods born into her soul (is it a fantasy book?) or if Ada is struggling with multiple personality disorder and this is how Ada envisions herself. Along the way, Ada stumbles into others who are not all human and have gods hanging around in their souls. Asughara struggles with being in Ada's body and constantly wants to go home to her godly siblings, but this would involve Ada dying.

Ada's compulsive and inconsistent actions take a heavy toll on the men she loves and on her family. We get small glimpses into how Ada is slowly tearing apart the people who try to support her through her madness. In the end this seems to be a story about self-identity and figuring out how to fight and accept all parts of yourself to live with this type of mental illness. Although, it could also be the story of a woman trying to survive the gods who have taken residence in her.

This is written in a very poetic and literary way. There is a lot of violence and sex here. The sex is not described in detail but is more viciously abstract with blunt harsh descriptions. At times I struggled to follow what was going on and see the point of it all. While I can say this was unique and had a very intriguing style to it, I can also say it wasn't something I enjoyed reading. It's pretty open ended, so I felt like the reader is subjected to a lot for very little closure.

My Summary (3.5/5): Overall this was a unique and visceral read that I respected but didn't really enjoy. The story is sexually very violent and fairly ambiguous. The reader is left uncertain as to whether or not Ada is struggling with a mental illness or an infestation of gods. I respect the poetic writing style and the intriguing magical realism feel, but the story was too violent, open-ended, and hard to follow for me. ( )
  krau0098 | Sep 21, 2023 |
Sublime exploration of identity, inside and outside. ( )
  Kiramke | Aug 19, 2023 |
Showing 1-5 of 48 (next | show all)
This unconventional novel tells the story of Ada, a baby born of mixed parentage who arrives in the world accompanied by a chaos of spirits, awakened at her birth when the gates between the spirit world and the world of the flesh are left open. ‘The first madness was that we were born,’ they say, ‘that they stuffed a god into a bag of skin.’ By this, the spirits mean that rather than becoming a unitary whole with their host, they retain their own interests and preoccupations, as well as the wrenching awareness that they are dislocated from the realm of the gods: ‘We were sent through carelessly, with a net of knowledge snarled around our ankles, not enough to tell us anything, just enough to trip us up.’
 
"Emezi’s talent is undeniable."
added by jagraham684 | editPublisher's Weekly (Nov 27, 2017)
 

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For those of us
with one foot
on the other side
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I have lived many lives inside this body.
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(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
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An extraordinary debut novel, Freshwater explores the surreal experience of having a fractured self. It centers around a young Nigerian woman, Ada, who develops separate selves within her as a result of being born "with one foot on the other side." Unsettling, heartwrenching, dark, and powerful, Freshwater is a sharp evocation of a rare way of experiencing the world, one that illuminates how we all construct our identities. Ada begins her life in the south of Nigeria as a troubled baby and a source of deep concern to her family. Her parents, Saul and Saachi, successfully prayed her into existence, but as she grows into a volatile and splintered child, it becomes clear that something went terribly awry. When Ada comes of age and moves to America for college, the group of selves within her grows in power and agency. A traumatic assault leads to a crystallization of her alternate selves: Asụghara and Saint Vincent. As Ada fades into the background of her own mind and these selves, now protective, now hedonistic, move into control, Ada's life spirals in a dark and dangerous direction. Narrated from the perspective of the various selves within Ada, and based in the author's realities, Freshwater explores the metaphysics of identity and mental health, plunging the reader into the mystery of being and self. Freshwater dazzles with ferocious energy and serpentine grace, heralding the arrival of a fierce new literary voice.

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