Freshwater: A Unique and Dreamy Debut

Does my rating make sense now?

Is this cheating? It’s probably cheating. If it’s not cheating, it’s at least unfair to the other books. The ones that have been there since middle school (Gamer Girl, I’m sorry!) or at least the ones from more than a year ago! But alas.

Anyway, Freshwater came to my attention in October of last year while I was researching some new books by black authors I could read. While I did end up reading one book immediately, Freshwater landed on the backburner and got given my normal run around before, finally, I read it.

Freshwater is the semi-autobiographical debut novel of Akwaeke Emezi. It’s hard to fit it into a typical story archetype, but I think the closest would be a coming of age story. It follows the birth, childhood, and adult life of a young plural ọgbanje called Ada or The Ada, depending on who is speaking, and the other beings inside of her. Ọgbanje are spirits from Igbo mythology said to be destined to cause deep distress to their human family, most commonly in dying young. Ada is, therefore, constantly called to die or cause harm to others, until she is saved in her way at the end.

First thing first, I found this an interesting read. Although a significant chunk of the novel takes place in America, it deals with an idea from a culture I have basically no knowledge of. I have always loved reading books like that, so of course I enjoyed this one as well for that reason. This is also a book I would say is a great example of “the craft of writing.” How small things like word choice and sentence structure combine to create vivid imagery. How Emezi switches the voice of her narrator depending on the character in focus. I was impressed by how that voice portrayed the distance between the narrator and the world. “We,” the collection of ọgbanje, speaks very intangibly, like inhuman observers, referring to blood as “marrow color” or in speaking in sayings like “When gods are talking, eavesdroppers will be struck deaf.” Asụghara, one of the ọgbanje, is closer, but holds humans in such contempt that distance is still there. And Ada herself speaks like an everyday person. There’s this idea of Ada being caught between two worlds and it was fascinating to see that between-ness in even the writing choices.

Beyond giving the novel a character that matches Ada’s story, the writing itself is very vivid and beautiful. There’s a lot of natural imagery or little details that made things all the more vivid. The not-so-downside is when things get violent, I had a visceral reaction. It’s always a treat when I can “see” scenes, especially when they’re very dreamy, as this novel often was.

As for something I didn’t enjoy as much, I thought this was kind of a hard novel to get into initially. It starts off fairly non-linear and disjointed with a lot of poetic mythological imagery. Plot points happen very quickly and all with that air, so I was kind of confused/overwhelmed prior to the introduction of Asụghara. Once that happened, things finally clicked for me and I enjoyed the experience more. As beautiful as the language is, the plot sometimes feels secondary to all the metaphors and such. If you prefer a much more straightforward writing style, then I would not suggest you add this to your reading list (unless you’re looking for a change of pace!).

There’s so much more to talk about: the characters, the cruelty, how despite the novel being in first and second person we view Ada from an outside perspective which makes her journey more interesting, how the novel plays with binaries from body and soul, man and woman, godhood and human..hood…. It’s really compelling! But for the sake of keeping this around one page, I’ll stop here. I recommend this book for people who like metaphysical explorations, books about different cultures and mythologies, and don’t mind a protagonist who does bad things. I would not recommend this book for people that don’t like a lot of metaphor or prefer more sympathetic characters. I liked it, but I feel the taste may be acquired.

4.8 two-headed snakes out of 5.

As previously stated, this is Emezi’s debut novel. They are, however, releasing a new novel very soon (or maybe it’s already released!). Check it out here.

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