Freshwater

I had heard good things about this book, but I didn't go seek it out until it was on my recommendation list from Tailored Book Recommendations. Which I am grateful for, because let me tell you, I was absolutely blown away from the very first page.

This book is the kind of dazzling that defies easy descriptions, but of course I have to try. When Ada is born, a number of ogbanje are trapped within her body. Not used to having mortal lives or possessing physical form, they mostly ride along -- whispering to her in her mind now and then, keeping her company. But when something terrible happens to Ada in college, the spirits take on more active roles, sometimes going so far as to take over, "possessing" her. At first it is all in the name of show more protecting Ada -- but the ogbanje have desires of their own, and balancing them all becomes increasingly difficult.

What's fascinating about this book is that as easily as it could be read as mythology/fantasy, it could all be read as a direct metaphor for mental illness and responses to trauma. I sometimes wondered if Emezi would "give the game away" and commit to one interpretation or the other, but the book lives in that tension throughout.

Fierce and compelling. I am sure this book will continue to find new readers. show less

This is an utterly unique story, compellingly told.

That said, it is also deeply disturbing. As background, the author describes this book in interviews as very close to memoir, which didn't surprise me given some of the ways the story is told (for example, a number of 'characters' that don't really play into the narrative show up periodically, in a way that only makes sense if they are real people from the author's life).

So, disturbing - first, because I couldn't follow the author/narrator's reinterpretation of their madness as spiritual and metaphysical. Second, because the book is so focused on the narrator's complicated, multiple self, that it skates over the other humans in their life, and the harm they did, over and over. A person show more may be a spirit being stuck in a human body, or a person may have multiple personality disorder, but that doesn't excuse using people like toys, much less breaking those toys like a spoiled child. The narrator acknowledges that harm, but never really reckons with it, because they are consumed with their internal conflicts. Other people don't seem real to them. And that, more than the strangeness of their spiritual condition/madness, is what is really grotesque about this novel. show less

This review can also be found on my blog.

I finished this after the Women’s Prize shortlist is released and all I can say is: it’s a damn travesty that this book didn’t make the cut. It was initially interesting to see that it was longlisted -- Akwaeke Emezi is nonbinary, which the judges were not aware of until after they had decided upon the list. Emezi gave their okay for the book’s inclusion regardless and fans were glad to see it gain further recognition. But for the judges to leave off this masterpiece in favor of the combination they did… I won’t get into it, but it sure doesn’t make any sense.

The first madness was that we were born, that they stuffed a god into a bag of skin.

I actually received a Netgalley ARC of show more this in January 2018, which I far too quickly DNFed in a “I’m not sure I Get this, maybe later” scenario. Maybe for the best, since I don’t know that I would have fully appreciated this novel without the growth my literary tastes have experienced over the last year. While I’m still not sure I was able to fully appreciate it -- there were doubtless many things I missed -- this is one of the most impactful books I have ever read and I’m sure I’ll never forget it.

The boy made Ada a gibbering thing in a corner -- this is the truth, but he would never get her again. I had arrived, flesh from flesh, true blood from true blood. I was the wildness under the skin, the skin into a weapon, the weapon over the flesh. I was here. No one would ever touch her again.

Freshwater is an exploration of many things, but at the forefront lie trauma, gender identity, and spirituality. It’s hard to explore the plot too deeply without spoilers, but I’ll say that this is one of the best portrayals of trauma that I’ve ever read. The entire book requires endless trigger warnings and it’s quite an intense experience, but I found it so rewarding. If you’re in the space where you can pick this up, I cannot recommend it enough. show less

I can't praise this book highly enough. It's a raw, visceral depiction of the experience of living with dissociative personalities, understood through the lens of the Odinani religion of the Igbo people of Nigeria.
The traumas that are inflicted upon the main character, Ada, are graphically narrated mainly by the spirits/dissociative parts, and also by Ada themself. This is represented as a protective and adaptive, if painful and wounding, process rather than as mental illness. Indeed, Ada's brushes with the psychiatric establishment are shown as dangerous and threatening to their selfhood, and their avoidance of 'treatment' as fortuitous escapes. Being semi-autobiographical, I give the author credit for knowing what they speak of. show more Powerfully, heartbreakingly insightful.
This book could be triggering for those who have experienced violence and sexual trauma. show less

I've read nothing like this before. The narration is tossed like a hot potato between various entities residing inside Ada, the protagonist. Very occasionally we hear from Ada directly. One chapter is a poem.

The plot points, place settings and auxiliary characters that a novel is usually built from exist. However, they are of little importance. The operatic struggle between the narrators and their vessel maintains center stage.

I'm unfamiliar with the spiritual framework at the core of the novel, but considerably less so than when I started it. Above and beyond the ideas directly presented in the book, I feel it introduced new ways to tell a story. I have new tools to think about my thoughts. It expanded my mind.

Awesome.

I could tell early on that Freshwater was not going to be a great fit for me as a reader. Literary fiction is a bit hit-or-miss. I like the lyrical language used in the genre, but the stories often don’t hold my interest. This is to say nothing against the books themselves in the literary fiction genre – I’m used to fantasy, which tends to be more quickly paced.

Freshwater is told in an interesting way, from the perspective of multiple personalities inside the body of a young woman. This split in self is not mental health related, it’s because Ada is ogbanje, which is similar to the western idea of a changeling. In Freshwater, we learn of the development of Ada’s selves, as well as multiple levels of transition – physical, show more sexual, spiritual, emotional. it’s beautifully written and the perspectives were each intriguing and easy to differentiate, even in audiobook form. I fully appreciated Emezi’s work in Freshwater and am happy to attest that it’s a wonderful book.

The narrative within Freshwater feels detached, but I also believe that’s one of the intriguing things about the way this book is written. The ogbanje is experiencing human life, but it is not invested, not fully living it. Depending on the personality narrating at the time, you feel a different primal emotion, or the thought patterns present differently. As a reader, I liked the detached storytelling for two reasons. First, I found it drove the characterization really well. Second, there is a lot of trauma in Freshwater.

Telling the story from a more distant perspective helps the reader witness the trauma without being as damaged by it. In very much the same way Asugara protects Ada from the horrors of her life, so to does this storytelling allow the reader to see what is happening and be angry about it… but it limits the descriptions to a place where it feels… safer. Don’t get me wrong, I’d still slap a huge content warning on it.

Freshwater is the sort of book that… I don’t know if I’d recommend, per se. It’s well-written, but it’s heavy and heartbreaking and very different from other books. It would have to be recommended to a certain kind of reader. Or I think someone would have to solicit my opinion on it. If you’re intrigued, pick it up (that’s what I did!) but know that it’s a little magical realism, a little literary fiction, and a lot of introspective language. It’s a work of art, but I wouldn’t say I enjoyed it. show less

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 show more 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. show less