Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi Review

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW

“The first madness was that we were born, that they stuffed a god into a bag of skin.”- Freshwater, Akwaeke Emezi

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 by the various selves within Ada and based in the author's realities, Freshwater dazzles with ferocious energy and serpentine grace, heralding the arrival of a fierce new literary voice.

I'm not a terribly diverse reader. In fact, just the other day I was looking at my bookshelf and I realized just how overwhelmingly white (and hella gay, but that's neither here nor there) my bookshelf is. I pick the books I read based on their summaries, and right now I've been super into Brideshead Revisited-y novels about gay Britons. Writers who are not white do not usually write such novels. But it's Black History Month. I don't usually pay attention to arbitrarily named months like Black History Month or Women's History Month or Pride Month because that's just me, but this is a new release that I really wanted to read before it came out and the fact that it was released in February is really just a bonus. However, if you really care about such things, this is my Black History Month read. 

First of all, wow, Emezi is a wonderful writer. Believe the hype. She has an amazingly lyrical and just altogether beautiful style that I was completely blown away by and couldn't believe it was a debut. Because of the beautiful style, I just flew through this novel, and actually didn't put it down once I picked it up. Even though the book is like 250 pages, I finished it in under an hour, a new record for me I think. In fact, I wonder where those extra 150 pages went!

And I was intrigued by the Nigerian legends that Emezi based her novel off of. The idea of the many gods living in Ada's head, making her portrayal of multiple personality disorder wonderfully original. While I still don't know if I believe in the existence of multiple personality disorder personally, Emezi makes an interesting case for it. I do, however, wish that psychiatric treatment got a better rap in the novel. I am an advocate for formal psychiatric diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders, and wish that more literature focused on the positives of being treated by medication or psychotherapy. But that's just me.

That being said, I found it hard to relate to Ada. She wasn't a protagonist, she was the vehicle in which the story was told which isn't necessarily a bad thing but it means that I wasn't as sympathetic towards her situation as I could have been because she didn't feel real. Which is probably why this novel didn't do anything in the way of convincing me that MPD was a real thing and not something separate from, say, schizophrenia. I was also disappointed with the poor portrayal of men. Every man in this book is either abusive or fatally flawed in some way. 

Overall, I really liked Freshwater. I'd definitely recommend picking it up for an interesting portrayal of mental illness and a quick read with beautiful writing. It'd be interesting to see what Akwaeke Emezi does next.

8 out of 10