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 t An extraordinary debut novel, Freshwater explores the surreal experience of having a fractured self. It centers around a ...
| Title | : | Freshwater |
| Author | : | Akwaeke Emezi |
| Rating | : | |
| Genres | : | Fiction |
| ISBN | : | Freshwater ISBN |
| Edition Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 229 pages pages |
Freshwater Reviews
When I got the depths of this novel, here during these dark hours, I was blown away! My eyes were misty at the end. It?s absolutely the most brilliant creative book written of its kind .... It became personal to me....looking back at my own journey- my own struggles - my own fight ...
It?s not easy to persuade a human to end their life ? they?re very attached to it, even when it makes them miserable, and Ada was no different. But it?s not the decision to cross back that?s difficult; it?s the crossing itself. Akwaeke Emezi?s Freshwater is a novel of ...
This was absolutely stunning. From the very first page I knew I was in for something extraordinary and unlike anything I have ever read. This debut combines many things I adore in books: unconventional framing and unreliable narrators, a story that gets recontextualized constantly and ...
5? DEBUT! ?Dedication To those of us with one foot on the other side." ?By the time she (our body) struggled out into the world, slick and louder than a village of storms, the gates were left open. We should have been anchored in her by then, asleep inside her membranes and...
4 fresh, imaginative stars to Freshwater! The most creative book I?ve read this year! ? ? ? ? I have read nothing like Freshwater before. It is hard to categorize. It is literary fiction, but what else? Magical realism? Mysticism? The author noted at the end that this...
Freshwater is a stunning novel, one that I dove into and couldn't surface out of for a while. It's like a pool of dark water that you don't really even want to get out of. And I was sad when the book finished - despite it being quite a violent and shaking experience. I am not lying whe...
How to review this, how to review this............ The first 50 pages or so of this book were really tough for me. I felt like I was physically fighting the book, trying to wrestle it into submission. After the initial struggle, I fell into a somewhat uneasy rhythm with the story bu...
It's hard to talk about something that has no precedent. Freshwater is utterly unique, and the result is breathtaking. It's a dark, sensual, and thoughtful novel about a young woman coming to terms with and accepting the multiple identities that define her. The details of Ada's life...
!!! https://africanbookaddict.com/2018/02... If I had known this book was as evil, dark and sinful as it was, I probably wouldn?t have bothered to read it. But now that I?ve marinated the story in my mind for a while, I can confidently declare that Freshwater is so much more tha...
This is a startlingly raw and dark novel about spirituality, abuse, trauma and mental illness. In this fresh perspective, debut novelist Akwaeke Emezi embeds ogbanje, or nonhuman entities, within Ada, a girl born to parents who had prayed to the God Ala for a daughter. Ala, a serpentin...
I was pulled in to this story (narrated by the author) of Ada, who is a gift from the (plural) Igbo serpent god to her parents for praying the right way. But because they were the child, the god(s) own her, and are always with her. There is a disturbing description of it at the beginni...
When I got the depths of this novel, here during these dark hours, I was blown away! My eyes were misty at the end. It?s absolutely the most brilliant creative book written of its kind .... It became personal to me....looking back at my own journey- my own struggles - my own fight ...
It?s not easy to persuade a human to end their life ? they?re very attached to it, even when it makes them miserable, and Ada was no different. But it?s not the decision to cross back that?s difficult; it?s the crossing itself. Akwaeke Emezi?s Freshwater is a novel of ...
This was absolutely stunning. From the very first page I knew I was in for something extraordinary and unlike anything I have ever read. This debut combines many things I adore in books: unconventional framing and unreliable narrators, a story that gets recontextualized constantly and ...
5? DEBUT! ?Dedication To those of us with one foot on the other side." ?By the time she (our body) struggled out into the world, slick and louder than a village of storms, the gates were left open. We should have been anchored in her by then, asleep inside her membranes and...
4 fresh, imaginative stars to Freshwater! The most creative book I?ve read this year! ? ? ? ? I have read nothing like Freshwater before. It is hard to categorize. It is literary fiction, but what else? Magical realism? Mysticism? The author noted at the end that this...
Freshwater is a stunning novel, one that I dove into and couldn't surface out of for a while. It's like a pool of dark water that you don't really even want to get out of. And I was sad when the book finished - despite it being quite a violent and shaking experience. I am not lying whe...
How to review this, how to review this............ The first 50 pages or so of this book were really tough for me. I felt like I was physically fighting the book, trying to wrestle it into submission. After the initial struggle, I fell into a somewhat uneasy rhythm with the story bu...
It's hard to talk about something that has no precedent. Freshwater is utterly unique, and the result is breathtaking. It's a dark, sensual, and thoughtful novel about a young woman coming to terms with and accepting the multiple identities that define her. The details of Ada's life...
!!! https://africanbookaddict.com/2018/02... If I had known this book was as evil, dark and sinful as it was, I probably wouldn?t have bothered to read it. But now that I?ve marinated the story in my mind for a while, I can confidently declare that Freshwater is so much more tha...
This is a startlingly raw and dark novel about spirituality, abuse, trauma and mental illness. In this fresh perspective, debut novelist Akwaeke Emezi embeds ogbanje, or nonhuman entities, within Ada, a girl born to parents who had prayed to the God Ala for a daughter. Ala, a serpentin...
I was pulled in to this story (narrated by the author) of Ada, who is a gift from the (plural) Igbo serpent god to her parents for praying the right way. But because they were the child, the god(s) own her, and are always with her. There is a disturbing description of it at the beginni...
Akwaeke Emezi Is a "5 Under 35" Honoree 2018 of the National Book Foundation "Freshwater" cleverly discusses the human mind by inquiring what actually constitutes "mental illness": To what degree is our inner fragmentation - the multitude of feelings and urges, the freedom to be many ...
I think that the best praise a book can get is having the reader think to himself ?this is something that I have never read?, and this is what made Freshwater for me such an outstanding experience, the fact that I had no prior book that I could compare it to, it was completely new ...
I did an unusual thing before writing this review, I looked at what other people have said about the book. Usually I like coming to a book without any advance knowledge and reviewing it without any awareness of its reception, but this time I was curious. It is a hard book to pin down, ...
Freshwater is the semi-autobiographical account of a young woman suffering from multiple personality disorder after a traumatic event. Steeped in Igbo tradition the main character Ada lives a life straddling two worlds. As the daughter of the serpent goddess Ala, she is born with ?on...
This was an intense read on so many levels. It?s strange but in a way that makes (mostly) perfect sense. The many facets of a person. The inner characters that live inside all of us. It is written in a completely unique and transformative way both contemporary and traditional. A ...
Having been a follower of Akwaeke Emezi on Instagram for some time, I was thrilled to see she'd written a novel. I expected it to be a reflection of the beautiful images and energy she floods us with on her Instagram feed. My oh my - I had no idea this book would be the exact opposite....
A unique examination of painful adolescence, Freshwater is bewitching, bewildering and arresting in equal measure. The novel combines an almost stream-of-consciousness narrative style with the central conceit of the multiple narrators being spirits or deities that inhabit the protagoni...
Review to come.....need to gather my thoughts about this one. ...
No matter how mad it sounded, the things that were happening in my head were real and had been happening for a very long time. After all the doctors and the diagnoses and the hospitals, this thing of being an ?gbanje, a child of Ala - that was the only path that brought me any peace....
Content Warning: Rape, Sexual Abuse, Suicide, Substance Abuse, Self Harm didn't know what I was in for when I started this reading this road map into Ada's mind. Ada is a woman whose group of identities control and direct her life. The spectacular prose morphed this explorat...
3.5 stars Right up frint I'm going to say that Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi will not be right for everyone - but then again which book is? It took me a while to understand what I was reading, to figure out who was narrating the story and I had to concentrate at all times. H...
#RWLChallenge: A Book with a neurodiverse main character of colour (own voices). Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for approving my request for a free digital copy in exchange for a review. TW: Rape Representation for: PTSD, Multiple Personality Disorder This book is too ...
Akwaeke Emezi?s debut is one of the most compelling?dare I say, bewitching?literary novels of recent years, largely a function of its incantatory prose and idiosyncratic narrative style. Its hero, Ada, is no mere mortal sufferer of multiple personalities but rather an Igbo deity ...
This is a very difficult book for me to review. It comes from a world that is very different to my own. There is a clue in the author description: "Akwaeke Emezi is an Igbo and Tamil writer and artist based in liminal spaces." Then there is an interview in which the author refers...
Still cementing my thoughts on this, but the long story short is: I didn't like this novel- the writing and execution. There was a lot more telling than showing with minimal buildup and character development. -------------------------- My interest in this novel is rooted in being a f...
Thank you to Netgalley and publisher for granting me this request of getting a free e-copy in exchange for a review. Just a disclaimer: my review does absolutely nothing for the book. It is far too brilliant. We'd need an entire day and a glass of wine or a cup of tea on an open ver...
i finished this some time ago. i'm waiting to find the words to say what it meant to me, and what it means, in general, in my opinion. it's not a book for everyone, but if you are part of a multiple reality or experience dissociation, you should probably read it immediately. if you lik...
When I got the depths of this novel, here during these dark hours, I was blown away! My eyes were misty at the end. It?s absolutely the most brilliant creative book written of its kind .... It became personal to me....looking back at my own journey- my own struggles - my own fight ...
When I got the depths of this novel, here during these dark hours, I was blown away! My eyes were misty at the end. It?s absolutely the most brilliant creative book written of its kind .... It became personal to me....looking back at my own journey- my own struggles - my own fight ...
It?s not easy to persuade a human to end their life ? they?re very attached to it, even when it makes them miserable, and Ada was no different. But it?s not the decision to cross back that?s difficult; it?s the crossing itself. Akwaeke Emezi?s Freshwater is a novel of ...
This was absolutely stunning. From the very first page I knew I was in for something extraordinary and unlike anything I have ever read. This debut combines many things I adore in books: unconventional framing and unreliable narrators, a story that gets recontextualized constantly and ...
5? DEBUT! ?Dedication To those of us with one foot on the other side." ?By the time she (our body) struggled out into the world, slick and louder than a village of storms, the gates were left open. We should have been anchored in her by then, asleep inside her membranes and...
When I got the depths of this novel, here during these dark hours, I was blown away! My eyes were misty at the end. It?s absolutely the most brilliant creative book written of its kind .... It became personal to me....looking back at my own journey- my own struggles - my own fight ...
It?s not easy to persuade a human to end their life ? they?re very attached to it, even when it makes them miserable, and Ada was no different. But it?s not the decision to cross back that?s difficult; it?s the crossing itself. Akwaeke Emezi?s Freshwater is a novel of ...
This was absolutely stunning. From the very first page I knew I was in for something extraordinary and unlike anything I have ever read. This debut combines many things I adore in books: unconventional framing and unreliable narrators, a story that gets recontextualized constantly and ...
5? DEBUT! ?Dedication To those of us with one foot on the other side." ?By the time she (our body) struggled out into the world, slick and louder than a village of storms, the gates were left open. We should have been anchored in her by then, asleep inside her membranes and...
4 fresh, imaginative stars to Freshwater! The most creative book I?ve read this year! ? ? ? ? I have read nothing like Freshwater before. It is hard to categorize. It is literary fiction, but what else? Magical realism? Mysticism? The author noted at the end that this...
Freshwater is a stunning novel, one that I dove into and couldn't surface out of for a while. It's like a pool of dark water that you don't really even want to get out of. And I was sad when the book finished - despite it being quite a violent and shaking experience. I am not lying whe...
How to review this, how to review this............ The first 50 pages or so of this book were really tough for me. I felt like I was physically fighting the book, trying to wrestle it into submission. After the initial struggle, I fell into a somewhat uneasy rhythm with the story bu...
When I got the depths of this novel, here during these dark hours, I was blown away! My eyes were misty at the end. It?s absolutely the most brilliant creative book written of its kind .... It became personal to me....looking back at my own journey- my own struggles - my own fight ...
It?s not easy to persuade a human to end their life ? they?re very attached to it, even when it makes them miserable, and Ada was no different. But it?s not the decision to cross back that?s difficult; it?s the crossing itself. Akwaeke Emezi?s Freshwater is a novel of ...
This was absolutely stunning. From the very first page I knew I was in for something extraordinary and unlike anything I have ever read. This debut combines many things I adore in books: unconventional framing and unreliable narrators, a story that gets recontextualized constantly and ...
5? DEBUT! ?Dedication To those of us with one foot on the other side." ?By the time she (our body) struggled out into the world, slick and louder than a village of storms, the gates were left open. We should have been anchored in her by then, asleep inside her membranes and...
4 fresh, imaginative stars to Freshwater! The most creative book I?ve read this year! ? ? ? ? I have read nothing like Freshwater before. It is hard to categorize. It is literary fiction, but what else? Magical realism? Mysticism? The author noted at the end that this...
Freshwater is a stunning novel, one that I dove into and couldn't surface out of for a while. It's like a pool of dark water that you don't really even want to get out of. And I was sad when the book finished - despite it being quite a violent and shaking experience. I am not lying whe...
How to review this, how to review this............ The first 50 pages or so of this book were really tough for me. I felt like I was physically fighting the book, trying to wrestle it into submission. After the initial struggle, I fell into a somewhat uneasy rhythm with the story bu...
It's hard to talk about something that has no precedent. Freshwater is utterly unique, and the result is breathtaking. It's a dark, sensual, and thoughtful novel about a young woman coming to terms with and accepting the multiple identities that define her. The details of Ada's life...
!!! https://africanbookaddict.com/2018/02... If I had known this book was as evil, dark and sinful as it was, I probably wouldn?t have bothered to read it. But now that I?ve marinated the story in my mind for a while, I can confidently declare that Freshwater is so much more tha...
This is a startlingly raw and dark novel about spirituality, abuse, trauma and mental illness. In this fresh perspective, debut novelist Akwaeke Emezi embeds ogbanje, or nonhuman entities, within Ada, a girl born to parents who had prayed to the God Ala for a daughter. Ala, a serpentin...
I was pulled in to this story (narrated by the author) of Ada, who is a gift from the (plural) Igbo serpent god to her parents for praying the right way. But because they were the child, the god(s) own her, and are always with her. There is a disturbing description of it at the beginni...
Akwaeke Emezi Is a "5 Under 35" Honoree 2018 of the National Book Foundation "Freshwater" cleverly discusses the human mind by inquiring what actually constitutes "mental illness": To what degree is our inner fragmentation - the multitude of feelings and urges, the freedom to be many ...
I think that the best praise a book can get is having the reader think to himself ?this is something that I have never read?, and this is what made Freshwater for me such an outstanding experience, the fact that I had no prior book that I could compare it to, it was completely new ...
I did an unusual thing before writing this review, I looked at what other people have said about the book. Usually I like coming to a book without any advance knowledge and reviewing it without any awareness of its reception, but this time I was curious. It is a hard book to pin down, ...
Freshwater is the semi-autobiographical account of a young woman suffering from multiple personality disorder after a traumatic event. Steeped in Igbo tradition the main character Ada lives a life straddling two worlds. As the daughter of the serpent goddess Ala, she is born with ?on...
This was an intense read on so many levels. It?s strange but in a way that makes (mostly) perfect sense. The many facets of a person. The inner characters that live inside all of us. It is written in a completely unique and transformative way both contemporary and traditional. A ...
Having been a follower of Akwaeke Emezi on Instagram for some time, I was thrilled to see she'd written a novel. I expected it to be a reflection of the beautiful images and energy she floods us with on her Instagram feed. My oh my - I had no idea this book would be the exact opposite....
A unique examination of painful adolescence, Freshwater is bewitching, bewildering and arresting in equal measure. The novel combines an almost stream-of-consciousness narrative style with the central conceit of the multiple narrators being spirits or deities that inhabit the protagoni...
Review to come.....need to gather my thoughts about this one. ...
No matter how mad it sounded, the things that were happening in my head were real and had been happening for a very long time. After all the doctors and the diagnoses and the hospitals, this thing of being an ?gbanje, a child of Ala - that was the only path that brought me any peace....
When I got the depths of this novel, here during these dark hours, I was blown away! My eyes were misty at the end. It?s absolutely the most brilliant creative book written of its kind .... It became personal to me....looking back at my own journey- my own struggles - my own fight ...
It?s not easy to persuade a human to end their life ? they?re very attached to it, even when it makes them miserable, and Ada was no different. But it?s not the decision to cross back that?s difficult; it?s the crossing itself. Akwaeke Emezi?s Freshwater is a novel of ...
This was absolutely stunning. From the very first page I knew I was in for something extraordinary and unlike anything I have ever read. This debut combines many things I adore in books: unconventional framing and unreliable narrators, a story that gets recontextualized constantly and ...
5? DEBUT! ?Dedication To those of us with one foot on the other side." ?By the time she (our body) struggled out into the world, slick and louder than a village of storms, the gates were left open. We should have been anchored in her by then, asleep inside her membranes and...
4 fresh, imaginative stars to Freshwater! The most creative book I?ve read this year! ? ? ? ? I have read nothing like Freshwater before. It is hard to categorize. It is literary fiction, but what else? Magical realism? Mysticism? The author noted at the end that this...
Freshwater is a stunning novel, one that I dove into and couldn't surface out of for a while. It's like a pool of dark water that you don't really even want to get out of. And I was sad when the book finished - despite it being quite a violent and shaking experience. I am not lying whe...
How to review this, how to review this............ The first 50 pages or so of this book were really tough for me. I felt like I was physically fighting the book, trying to wrestle it into submission. After the initial struggle, I fell into a somewhat uneasy rhythm with the story bu...
It's hard to talk about something that has no precedent. Freshwater is utterly unique, and the result is breathtaking. It's a dark, sensual, and thoughtful novel about a young woman coming to terms with and accepting the multiple identities that define her. The details of Ada's life...
When I got the depths of this novel, here during these dark hours, I was blown away! My eyes were misty at the end. It?s absolutely the most brilliant creative book written of its kind .... It became personal to me....looking back at my own journey- my own struggles - my own fight ...
It?s not easy to persuade a human to end their life ? they?re very attached to it, even when it makes them miserable, and Ada was no different. But it?s not the decision to cross back that?s difficult; it?s the crossing itself. Akwaeke Emezi?s Freshwater is a novel of ...
This was absolutely stunning. From the very first page I knew I was in for something extraordinary and unlike anything I have ever read. This debut combines many things I adore in books: unconventional framing and unreliable narrators, a story that gets recontextualized constantly and ...
5? DEBUT! ?Dedication To those of us with one foot on the other side." ?By the time she (our body) struggled out into the world, slick and louder than a village of storms, the gates were left open. We should have been anchored in her by then, asleep inside her membranes and...
4 fresh, imaginative stars to Freshwater! The most creative book I?ve read this year! ? ? ? ? I have read nothing like Freshwater before. It is hard to categorize. It is literary fiction, but what else? Magical realism? Mysticism? The author noted at the end that this...
Freshwater is a stunning novel, one that I dove into and couldn't surface out of for a while. It's like a pool of dark water that you don't really even want to get out of. And I was sad when the book finished - despite it being quite a violent and shaking experience. I am not lying whe...
How to review this, how to review this............ The first 50 pages or so of this book were really tough for me. I felt like I was physically fighting the book, trying to wrestle it into submission. After the initial struggle, I fell into a somewhat uneasy rhythm with the story bu...
It's hard to talk about something that has no precedent. Freshwater is utterly unique, and the result is breathtaking. It's a dark, sensual, and thoughtful novel about a young woman coming to terms with and accepting the multiple identities that define her. The details of Ada's life...
!!! https://africanbookaddict.com/2018/02... If I had known this book was as evil, dark and sinful as it was, I probably wouldn?t have bothered to read it. But now that I?ve marinated the story in my mind for a while, I can confidently declare that Freshwater is so much more tha...
This is a startlingly raw and dark novel about spirituality, abuse, trauma and mental illness. In this fresh perspective, debut novelist Akwaeke Emezi embeds ogbanje, or nonhuman entities, within Ada, a girl born to parents who had prayed to the God Ala for a daughter. Ala, a serpentin...
I was pulled in to this story (narrated by the author) of Ada, who is a gift from the (plural) Igbo serpent god to her parents for praying the right way. But because they were the child, the god(s) own her, and are always with her. There is a disturbing description of it at the beginni...
Akwaeke Emezi Is a "5 Under 35" Honoree 2018 of the National Book Foundation "Freshwater" cleverly discusses the human mind by inquiring what actually constitutes "mental illness": To what degree is our inner fragmentation - the multitude of feelings and urges, the freedom to be many ...
I think that the best praise a book can get is having the reader think to himself ?this is something that I have never read?, and this is what made Freshwater for me such an outstanding experience, the fact that I had no prior book that I could compare it to, it was completely new ...
I did an unusual thing before writing this review, I looked at what other people have said about the book. Usually I like coming to a book without any advance knowledge and reviewing it without any awareness of its reception, but this time I was curious. It is a hard book to pin down, ...
When I got the depths of this novel, here during these dark hours, I was blown away! My eyes were misty at the end. It?s absolutely the most brilliant creative book written of its kind .... It became personal to me....looking back at my own journey- my own struggles - my own fight ...
It?s not easy to persuade a human to end their life ? they?re very attached to it, even when it makes them miserable, and Ada was no different. But it?s not the decision to cross back that?s difficult; it?s the crossing itself. Akwaeke Emezi?s Freshwater is a novel of ...
This was absolutely stunning. From the very first page I knew I was in for something extraordinary and unlike anything I have ever read. This debut combines many things I adore in books: unconventional framing and unreliable narrators, a story that gets recontextualized constantly and ...
5? DEBUT! ?Dedication To those of us with one foot on the other side." ?By the time she (our body) struggled out into the world, slick and louder than a village of storms, the gates were left open. We should have been anchored in her by then, asleep inside her membranes and...
4 fresh, imaginative stars to Freshwater! The most creative book I?ve read this year! ? ? ? ? I have read nothing like Freshwater before. It is hard to categorize. It is literary fiction, but what else? Magical realism? Mysticism? The author noted at the end that this...
Freshwater is a stunning novel, one that I dove into and couldn't surface out of for a while. It's like a pool of dark water that you don't really even want to get out of. And I was sad when the book finished - despite it being quite a violent and shaking experience. I am not lying whe...
How to review this, how to review this............ The first 50 pages or so of this book were really tough for me. I felt like I was physically fighting the book, trying to wrestle it into submission. After the initial struggle, I fell into a somewhat uneasy rhythm with the story bu...
It's hard to talk about something that has no precedent. Freshwater is utterly unique, and the result is breathtaking. It's a dark, sensual, and thoughtful novel about a young woman coming to terms with and accepting the multiple identities that define her. The details of Ada's life...
!!! https://africanbookaddict.com/2018/02... If I had known this book was as evil, dark and sinful as it was, I probably wouldn?t have bothered to read it. But now that I?ve marinated the story in my mind for a while, I can confidently declare that Freshwater is so much more tha...
This is a startlingly raw and dark novel about spirituality, abuse, trauma and mental illness. In this fresh perspective, debut novelist Akwaeke Emezi embeds ogbanje, or nonhuman entities, within Ada, a girl born to parents who had prayed to the God Ala for a daughter. Ala, a serpentin...
I was pulled in to this story (narrated by the author) of Ada, who is a gift from the (plural) Igbo serpent god to her parents for praying the right way. But because they were the child, the god(s) own her, and are always with her. There is a disturbing description of it at the beginni...
Akwaeke Emezi Is a "5 Under 35" Honoree 2018 of the National Book Foundation "Freshwater" cleverly discusses the human mind by inquiring what actually constitutes "mental illness": To what degree is our inner fragmentation - the multitude of feelings and urges, the freedom to be many ...
I think that the best praise a book can get is having the reader think to himself ?this is something that I have never read?, and this is what made Freshwater for me such an outstanding experience, the fact that I had no prior book that I could compare it to, it was completely new ...
I did an unusual thing before writing this review, I looked at what other people have said about the book. Usually I like coming to a book without any advance knowledge and reviewing it without any awareness of its reception, but this time I was curious. It is a hard book to pin down, ...
Freshwater is the semi-autobiographical account of a young woman suffering from multiple personality disorder after a traumatic event. Steeped in Igbo tradition the main character Ada lives a life straddling two worlds. As the daughter of the serpent goddess Ala, she is born with ?on...
This was an intense read on so many levels. It?s strange but in a way that makes (mostly) perfect sense. The many facets of a person. The inner characters that live inside all of us. It is written in a completely unique and transformative way both contemporary and traditional. A ...
Having been a follower of Akwaeke Emezi on Instagram for some time, I was thrilled to see she'd written a novel. I expected it to be a reflection of the beautiful images and energy she floods us with on her Instagram feed. My oh my - I had no idea this book would be the exact opposite....
A unique examination of painful adolescence, Freshwater is bewitching, bewildering and arresting in equal measure. The novel combines an almost stream-of-consciousness narrative style with the central conceit of the multiple narrators being spirits or deities that inhabit the protagoni...
Review to come.....need to gather my thoughts about this one. ...
When I got the depths of this novel, here during these dark hours, I was blown away! My eyes were misty at the end. It?s absolutely the most brilliant creative book written of its kind .... It became personal to me....looking back at my own journey- my own struggles - my own fight ...
It?s not easy to persuade a human to end their life ? they?re very attached to it, even when it makes them miserable, and Ada was no different. But it?s not the decision to cross back that?s difficult; it?s the crossing itself. Akwaeke Emezi?s Freshwater is a novel of ...
This was absolutely stunning. From the very first page I knew I was in for something extraordinary and unlike anything I have ever read. This debut combines many things I adore in books: unconventional framing and unreliable narrators, a story that gets recontextualized constantly and ...
5? DEBUT! ?Dedication To those of us with one foot on the other side." ?By the time she (our body) struggled out into the world, slick and louder than a village of storms, the gates were left open. We should have been anchored in her by then, asleep inside her membranes and...
4 fresh, imaginative stars to Freshwater! The most creative book I?ve read this year! ? ? ? ? I have read nothing like Freshwater before. It is hard to categorize. It is literary fiction, but what else? Magical realism? Mysticism? The author noted at the end that this...
Freshwater is a stunning novel, one that I dove into and couldn't surface out of for a while. It's like a pool of dark water that you don't really even want to get out of. And I was sad when the book finished - despite it being quite a violent and shaking experience. I am not lying whe...
How to review this, how to review this............ The first 50 pages or so of this book were really tough for me. I felt like I was physically fighting the book, trying to wrestle it into submission. After the initial struggle, I fell into a somewhat uneasy rhythm with the story bu...
It's hard to talk about something that has no precedent. Freshwater is utterly unique, and the result is breathtaking. It's a dark, sensual, and thoughtful novel about a young woman coming to terms with and accepting the multiple identities that define her. The details of Ada's life...
!!! https://africanbookaddict.com/2018/02... If I had known this book was as evil, dark and sinful as it was, I probably wouldn?t have bothered to read it. But now that I?ve marinated the story in my mind for a while, I can confidently declare that Freshwater is so much more tha...
This is a startlingly raw and dark novel about spirituality, abuse, trauma and mental illness. In this fresh perspective, debut novelist Akwaeke Emezi embeds ogbanje, or nonhuman entities, within Ada, a girl born to parents who had prayed to the God Ala for a daughter. Ala, a serpentin...
I was pulled in to this story (narrated by the author) of Ada, who is a gift from the (plural) Igbo serpent god to her parents for praying the right way. But because they were the child, the god(s) own her, and are always with her. There is a disturbing description of it at the beginni...
Akwaeke Emezi Is a "5 Under 35" Honoree 2018 of the National Book Foundation "Freshwater" cleverly discusses the human mind by inquiring what actually constitutes "mental illness": To what degree is our inner fragmentation - the multitude of feelings and urges, the freedom to be many ...
I think that the best praise a book can get is having the reader think to himself ?this is something that I have never read?, and this is what made Freshwater for me such an outstanding experience, the fact that I had no prior book that I could compare it to, it was completely new ...
I did an unusual thing before writing this review, I looked at what other people have said about the book. Usually I like coming to a book without any advance knowledge and reviewing it without any awareness of its reception, but this time I was curious. It is a hard book to pin down, ...
Freshwater is the semi-autobiographical account of a young woman suffering from multiple personality disorder after a traumatic event. Steeped in Igbo tradition the main character Ada lives a life straddling two worlds. As the daughter of the serpent goddess Ala, she is born with ?on...
This was an intense read on so many levels. It?s strange but in a way that makes (mostly) perfect sense. The many facets of a person. The inner characters that live inside all of us. It is written in a completely unique and transformative way both contemporary and traditional. A ...
Having been a follower of Akwaeke Emezi on Instagram for some time, I was thrilled to see she'd written a novel. I expected it to be a reflection of the beautiful images and energy she floods us with on her Instagram feed. My oh my - I had no idea this book would be the exact opposite....
A unique examination of painful adolescence, Freshwater is bewitching, bewildering and arresting in equal measure. The novel combines an almost stream-of-consciousness narrative style with the central conceit of the multiple narrators being spirits or deities that inhabit the protagoni...
Review to come.....need to gather my thoughts about this one. ...
No matter how mad it sounded, the things that were happening in my head were real and had been happening for a very long time. After all the doctors and the diagnoses and the hospitals, this thing of being an ?gbanje, a child of Ala - that was the only path that brought me any peace....
Content Warning: Rape, Sexual Abuse, Suicide, Substance Abuse, Self Harm didn't know what I was in for when I started this reading this road map into Ada's mind. Ada is a woman whose group of identities control and direct her life. The spectacular prose morphed this explorat...
3.5 stars Right up frint I'm going to say that Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi will not be right for everyone - but then again which book is? It took me a while to understand what I was reading, to figure out who was narrating the story and I had to concentrate at all times. H...
#RWLChallenge: A Book with a neurodiverse main character of colour (own voices). Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for approving my request for a free digital copy in exchange for a review. TW: Rape Representation for: PTSD, Multiple Personality Disorder This book is too ...
Akwaeke Emezi?s debut is one of the most compelling?dare I say, bewitching?literary novels of recent years, largely a function of its incantatory prose and idiosyncratic narrative style. Its hero, Ada, is no mere mortal sufferer of multiple personalities but rather an Igbo deity ...
This is a very difficult book for me to review. It comes from a world that is very different to my own. There is a clue in the author description: "Akwaeke Emezi is an Igbo and Tamil writer and artist based in liminal spaces." Then there is an interview in which the author refers...
Still cementing my thoughts on this, but the long story short is: I didn't like this novel- the writing and execution. There was a lot more telling than showing with minimal buildup and character development. -------------------------- My interest in this novel is rooted in being a f...
When I got the depths of this novel, here during these dark hours, I was blown away! My eyes were misty at the end. It?s absolutely the most brilliant creative book written of its kind .... It became personal to me....looking back at my own journey- my own struggles - my own fight ...
It?s not easy to persuade a human to end their life ? they?re very attached to it, even when it makes them miserable, and Ada was no different. But it?s not the decision to cross back that?s difficult; it?s the crossing itself. Akwaeke Emezi?s Freshwater is a novel of ...
This was absolutely stunning. From the very first page I knew I was in for something extraordinary and unlike anything I have ever read. This debut combines many things I adore in books: unconventional framing and unreliable narrators, a story that gets recontextualized constantly and ...
5? DEBUT! ?Dedication To those of us with one foot on the other side." ?By the time she (our body) struggled out into the world, slick and louder than a village of storms, the gates were left open. We should have been anchored in her by then, asleep inside her membranes and...
4 fresh, imaginative stars to Freshwater! The most creative book I?ve read this year! ? ? ? ? I have read nothing like Freshwater before. It is hard to categorize. It is literary fiction, but what else? Magical realism? Mysticism? The author noted at the end that this...
Freshwater is a stunning novel, one that I dove into and couldn't surface out of for a while. It's like a pool of dark water that you don't really even want to get out of. And I was sad when the book finished - despite it being quite a violent and shaking experience. I am not lying whe...
How to review this, how to review this............ The first 50 pages or so of this book were really tough for me. I felt like I was physically fighting the book, trying to wrestle it into submission. After the initial struggle, I fell into a somewhat uneasy rhythm with the story bu...
It's hard to talk about something that has no precedent. Freshwater is utterly unique, and the result is breathtaking. It's a dark, sensual, and thoughtful novel about a young woman coming to terms with and accepting the multiple identities that define her. The details of Ada's life...
!!! https://africanbookaddict.com/2018/02... If I had known this book was as evil, dark and sinful as it was, I probably wouldn?t have bothered to read it. But now that I?ve marinated the story in my mind for a while, I can confidently declare that Freshwater is so much more tha...
This is a startlingly raw and dark novel about spirituality, abuse, trauma and mental illness. In this fresh perspective, debut novelist Akwaeke Emezi embeds ogbanje, or nonhuman entities, within Ada, a girl born to parents who had prayed to the God Ala for a daughter. Ala, a serpentin...
I was pulled in to this story (narrated by the author) of Ada, who is a gift from the (plural) Igbo serpent god to her parents for praying the right way. But because they were the child, the god(s) own her, and are always with her. There is a disturbing description of it at the beginni...
Akwaeke Emezi Is a "5 Under 35" Honoree 2018 of the National Book Foundation "Freshwater" cleverly discusses the human mind by inquiring what actually constitutes "mental illness": To what degree is our inner fragmentation - the multitude of feelings and urges, the freedom to be many ...
I think that the best praise a book can get is having the reader think to himself ?this is something that I have never read?, and this is what made Freshwater for me such an outstanding experience, the fact that I had no prior book that I could compare it to, it was completely new ...
I did an unusual thing before writing this review, I looked at what other people have said about the book. Usually I like coming to a book without any advance knowledge and reviewing it without any awareness of its reception, but this time I was curious. It is a hard book to pin down, ...
Freshwater is the semi-autobiographical account of a young woman suffering from multiple personality disorder after a traumatic event. Steeped in Igbo tradition the main character Ada lives a life straddling two worlds. As the daughter of the serpent goddess Ala, she is born with ?on...
This was an intense read on so many levels. It?s strange but in a way that makes (mostly) perfect sense. The many facets of a person. The inner characters that live inside all of us. It is written in a completely unique and transformative way both contemporary and traditional. A ...
Having been a follower of Akwaeke Emezi on Instagram for some time, I was thrilled to see she'd written a novel. I expected it to be a reflection of the beautiful images and energy she floods us with on her Instagram feed. My oh my - I had no idea this book would be the exact opposite....
A unique examination of painful adolescence, Freshwater is bewitching, bewildering and arresting in equal measure. The novel combines an almost stream-of-consciousness narrative style with the central conceit of the multiple narrators being spirits or deities that inhabit the protagoni...
When I got the depths of this novel, here during these dark hours, I was blown away! My eyes were misty at the end. It?s absolutely the most brilliant creative book written of its kind .... It became personal to me....looking back at my own journey- my own struggles - my own fight ...
It?s not easy to persuade a human to end their life ? they?re very attached to it, even when it makes them miserable, and Ada was no different. But it?s not the decision to cross back that?s difficult; it?s the crossing itself. Akwaeke Emezi?s Freshwater is a novel of ...
This was absolutely stunning. From the very first page I knew I was in for something extraordinary and unlike anything I have ever read. This debut combines many things I adore in books: unconventional framing and unreliable narrators, a story that gets recontextualized constantly and ...
5? DEBUT! ?Dedication To those of us with one foot on the other side." ?By the time she (our body) struggled out into the world, slick and louder than a village of storms, the gates were left open. We should have been anchored in her by then, asleep inside her membranes and...
4 fresh, imaginative stars to Freshwater! The most creative book I?ve read this year! ? ? ? ? I have read nothing like Freshwater before. It is hard to categorize. It is literary fiction, but what else? Magical realism? Mysticism? The author noted at the end that this...
Freshwater is a stunning novel, one that I dove into and couldn't surface out of for a while. It's like a pool of dark water that you don't really even want to get out of. And I was sad when the book finished - despite it being quite a violent and shaking experience. I am not lying whe...
How to review this, how to review this............ The first 50 pages or so of this book were really tough for me. I felt like I was physically fighting the book, trying to wrestle it into submission. After the initial struggle, I fell into a somewhat uneasy rhythm with the story bu...
It's hard to talk about something that has no precedent. Freshwater is utterly unique, and the result is breathtaking. It's a dark, sensual, and thoughtful novel about a young woman coming to terms with and accepting the multiple identities that define her. The details of Ada's life...
!!! https://africanbookaddict.com/2018/02... If I had known this book was as evil, dark and sinful as it was, I probably wouldn?t have bothered to read it. But now that I?ve marinated the story in my mind for a while, I can confidently declare that Freshwater is so much more tha...
This is a startlingly raw and dark novel about spirituality, abuse, trauma and mental illness. In this fresh perspective, debut novelist Akwaeke Emezi embeds ogbanje, or nonhuman entities, within Ada, a girl born to parents who had prayed to the God Ala for a daughter. Ala, a serpentin...
I was pulled in to this story (narrated by the author) of Ada, who is a gift from the (plural) Igbo serpent god to her parents for praying the right way. But because they were the child, the god(s) own her, and are always with her. There is a disturbing description of it at the beginni...
Akwaeke Emezi Is a "5 Under 35" Honoree 2018 of the National Book Foundation "Freshwater" cleverly discusses the human mind by inquiring what actually constitutes "mental illness": To what degree is our inner fragmentation - the multitude of feelings and urges, the freedom to be many ...
I think that the best praise a book can get is having the reader think to himself ?this is something that I have never read?, and this is what made Freshwater for me such an outstanding experience, the fact that I had no prior book that I could compare it to, it was completely new ...
I did an unusual thing before writing this review, I looked at what other people have said about the book. Usually I like coming to a book without any advance knowledge and reviewing it without any awareness of its reception, but this time I was curious. It is a hard book to pin down, ...
Freshwater is the semi-autobiographical account of a young woman suffering from multiple personality disorder after a traumatic event. Steeped in Igbo tradition the main character Ada lives a life straddling two worlds. As the daughter of the serpent goddess Ala, she is born with ?on...
This was an intense read on so many levels. It?s strange but in a way that makes (mostly) perfect sense. The many facets of a person. The inner characters that live inside all of us. It is written in a completely unique and transformative way both contemporary and traditional. A ...
Having been a follower of Akwaeke Emezi on Instagram for some time, I was thrilled to see she'd written a novel. I expected it to be a reflection of the beautiful images and energy she floods us with on her Instagram feed. My oh my - I had no idea this book would be the exact opposite....
A unique examination of painful adolescence, Freshwater is bewitching, bewildering and arresting in equal measure. The novel combines an almost stream-of-consciousness narrative style with the central conceit of the multiple narrators being spirits or deities that inhabit the protagoni...
Review to come.....need to gather my thoughts about this one. ...
No matter how mad it sounded, the things that were happening in my head were real and had been happening for a very long time. After all the doctors and the diagnoses and the hospitals, this thing of being an ?gbanje, a child of Ala - that was the only path that brought me any peace....
Content Warning: Rape, Sexual Abuse, Suicide, Substance Abuse, Self Harm didn't know what I was in for when I started this reading this road map into Ada's mind. Ada is a woman whose group of identities control and direct her life. The spectacular prose morphed this explorat...
When I got the depths of this novel, here during these dark hours, I was blown away! My eyes were misty at the end. It?s absolutely the most brilliant creative book written of its kind .... It became personal to me....looking back at my own journey- my own struggles - my own fight ...
It?s not easy to persuade a human to end their life ? they?re very attached to it, even when it makes them miserable, and Ada was no different. But it?s not the decision to cross back that?s difficult; it?s the crossing itself. Akwaeke Emezi?s Freshwater is a novel of ...
This was absolutely stunning. From the very first page I knew I was in for something extraordinary and unlike anything I have ever read. This debut combines many things I adore in books: unconventional framing and unreliable narrators, a story that gets recontextualized constantly and ...
5? DEBUT! ?Dedication To those of us with one foot on the other side." ?By the time she (our body) struggled out into the world, slick and louder than a village of storms, the gates were left open. We should have been anchored in her by then, asleep inside her membranes and...
4 fresh, imaginative stars to Freshwater! The most creative book I?ve read this year! ? ? ? ? I have read nothing like Freshwater before. It is hard to categorize. It is literary fiction, but what else? Magical realism? Mysticism? The author noted at the end that this...
Freshwater is a stunning novel, one that I dove into and couldn't surface out of for a while. It's like a pool of dark water that you don't really even want to get out of. And I was sad when the book finished - despite it being quite a violent and shaking experience. I am not lying whe...
When I got the depths of this novel, here during these dark hours, I was blown away! My eyes were misty at the end. It?s absolutely the most brilliant creative book written of its kind .... It became personal to me....looking back at my own journey- my own struggles - my own fight ...
It?s not easy to persuade a human to end their life ? they?re very attached to it, even when it makes them miserable, and Ada was no different. But it?s not the decision to cross back that?s difficult; it?s the crossing itself. Akwaeke Emezi?s Freshwater is a novel of ...
This was absolutely stunning. From the very first page I knew I was in for something extraordinary and unlike anything I have ever read. This debut combines many things I adore in books: unconventional framing and unreliable narrators, a story that gets recontextualized constantly and ...
5? DEBUT! ?Dedication To those of us with one foot on the other side." ?By the time she (our body) struggled out into the world, slick and louder than a village of storms, the gates were left open. We should have been anchored in her by then, asleep inside her membranes and...
4 fresh, imaginative stars to Freshwater! The most creative book I?ve read this year! ? ? ? ? I have read nothing like Freshwater before. It is hard to categorize. It is literary fiction, but what else? Magical realism? Mysticism? The author noted at the end that this...
Freshwater is a stunning novel, one that I dove into and couldn't surface out of for a while. It's like a pool of dark water that you don't really even want to get out of. And I was sad when the book finished - despite it being quite a violent and shaking experience. I am not lying whe...
How to review this, how to review this............ The first 50 pages or so of this book were really tough for me. I felt like I was physically fighting the book, trying to wrestle it into submission. After the initial struggle, I fell into a somewhat uneasy rhythm with the story bu...
It's hard to talk about something that has no precedent. Freshwater is utterly unique, and the result is breathtaking. It's a dark, sensual, and thoughtful novel about a young woman coming to terms with and accepting the multiple identities that define her. The details of Ada's life...
!!! https://africanbookaddict.com/2018/02... If I had known this book was as evil, dark and sinful as it was, I probably wouldn?t have bothered to read it. But now that I?ve marinated the story in my mind for a while, I can confidently declare that Freshwater is so much more tha...
When I got the depths of this novel, here during these dark hours, I was blown away! My eyes were misty at the end. It?s absolutely the most brilliant creative book written of its kind .... It became personal to me....looking back at my own journey- my own struggles - my own fight ...
It?s not easy to persuade a human to end their life ? they?re very attached to it, even when it makes them miserable, and Ada was no different. But it?s not the decision to cross back that?s difficult; it?s the crossing itself. Akwaeke Emezi?s Freshwater is a novel of ...
This was absolutely stunning. From the very first page I knew I was in for something extraordinary and unlike anything I have ever read. This debut combines many things I adore in books: unconventional framing and unreliable narrators, a story that gets recontextualized constantly and ...
5? DEBUT! ?Dedication To those of us with one foot on the other side." ?By the time she (our body) struggled out into the world, slick and louder than a village of storms, the gates were left open. We should have been anchored in her by then, asleep inside her membranes and...
4 fresh, imaginative stars to Freshwater! The most creative book I?ve read this year! ? ? ? ? I have read nothing like Freshwater before. It is hard to categorize. It is literary fiction, but what else? Magical realism? Mysticism? The author noted at the end that this...
Freshwater is a stunning novel, one that I dove into and couldn't surface out of for a while. It's like a pool of dark water that you don't really even want to get out of. And I was sad when the book finished - despite it being quite a violent and shaking experience. I am not lying whe...
How to review this, how to review this............ The first 50 pages or so of this book were really tough for me. I felt like I was physically fighting the book, trying to wrestle it into submission. After the initial struggle, I fell into a somewhat uneasy rhythm with the story bu...
It's hard to talk about something that has no precedent. Freshwater is utterly unique, and the result is breathtaking. It's a dark, sensual, and thoughtful novel about a young woman coming to terms with and accepting the multiple identities that define her. The details of Ada's life...
!!! https://africanbookaddict.com/2018/02... If I had known this book was as evil, dark and sinful as it was, I probably wouldn?t have bothered to read it. But now that I?ve marinated the story in my mind for a while, I can confidently declare that Freshwater is so much more tha...
This is a startlingly raw and dark novel about spirituality, abuse, trauma and mental illness. In this fresh perspective, debut novelist Akwaeke Emezi embeds ogbanje, or nonhuman entities, within Ada, a girl born to parents who had prayed to the God Ala for a daughter. Ala, a serpentin...
I was pulled in to this story (narrated by the author) of Ada, who is a gift from the (plural) Igbo serpent god to her parents for praying the right way. But because they were the child, the god(s) own her, and are always with her. There is a disturbing description of it at the beginni...
Akwaeke Emezi Is a "5 Under 35" Honoree 2018 of the National Book Foundation "Freshwater" cleverly discusses the human mind by inquiring what actually constitutes "mental illness": To what degree is our inner fragmentation - the multitude of feelings and urges, the freedom to be many ...
I think that the best praise a book can get is having the reader think to himself ?this is something that I have never read?, and this is what made Freshwater for me such an outstanding experience, the fact that I had no prior book that I could compare it to, it was completely new ...
I did an unusual thing before writing this review, I looked at what other people have said about the book. Usually I like coming to a book without any advance knowledge and reviewing it without any awareness of its reception, but this time I was curious. It is a hard book to pin down, ...
Freshwater is the semi-autobiographical account of a young woman suffering from multiple personality disorder after a traumatic event. Steeped in Igbo tradition the main character Ada lives a life straddling two worlds. As the daughter of the serpent goddess Ala, she is born with ?on...
This was an intense read on so many levels. It?s strange but in a way that makes (mostly) perfect sense. The many facets of a person. The inner characters that live inside all of us. It is written in a completely unique and transformative way both contemporary and traditional. A ...
When I got the depths of this novel, here during these dark hours, I was blown away! My eyes were misty at the end. It?s absolutely the most brilliant creative book written of its kind .... It became personal to me....looking back at my own journey- my own struggles - my own fight ...
It?s not easy to persuade a human to end their life ? they?re very attached to it, even when it makes them miserable, and Ada was no different. But it?s not the decision to cross back that?s difficult; it?s the crossing itself. Akwaeke Emezi?s Freshwater is a novel of ...
This was absolutely stunning. From the very first page I knew I was in for something extraordinary and unlike anything I have ever read. This debut combines many things I adore in books: unconventional framing and unreliable narrators, a story that gets recontextualized constantly and ...
5? DEBUT! ?Dedication To those of us with one foot on the other side." ?By the time she (our body) struggled out into the world, slick and louder than a village of storms, the gates were left open. We should have been anchored in her by then, asleep inside her membranes and...
4 fresh, imaginative stars to Freshwater! The most creative book I?ve read this year! ? ? ? ? I have read nothing like Freshwater before. It is hard to categorize. It is literary fiction, but what else? Magical realism? Mysticism? The author noted at the end that this...
Freshwater is a stunning novel, one that I dove into and couldn't surface out of for a while. It's like a pool of dark water that you don't really even want to get out of. And I was sad when the book finished - despite it being quite a violent and shaking experience. I am not lying whe...
How to review this, how to review this............ The first 50 pages or so of this book were really tough for me. I felt like I was physically fighting the book, trying to wrestle it into submission. After the initial struggle, I fell into a somewhat uneasy rhythm with the story bu...
It's hard to talk about something that has no precedent. Freshwater is utterly unique, and the result is breathtaking. It's a dark, sensual, and thoughtful novel about a young woman coming to terms with and accepting the multiple identities that define her. The details of Ada's life...
!!! https://africanbookaddict.com/2018/02... If I had known this book was as evil, dark and sinful as it was, I probably wouldn?t have bothered to read it. But now that I?ve marinated the story in my mind for a while, I can confidently declare that Freshwater is so much more tha...
This is a startlingly raw and dark novel about spirituality, abuse, trauma and mental illness. In this fresh perspective, debut novelist Akwaeke Emezi embeds ogbanje, or nonhuman entities, within Ada, a girl born to parents who had prayed to the God Ala for a daughter. Ala, a serpentin...
I was pulled in to this story (narrated by the author) of Ada, who is a gift from the (plural) Igbo serpent god to her parents for praying the right way. But because they were the child, the god(s) own her, and are always with her. There is a disturbing description of it at the beginni...
Akwaeke Emezi Is a "5 Under 35" Honoree 2018 of the National Book Foundation "Freshwater" cleverly discusses the human mind by inquiring what actually constitutes "mental illness": To what degree is our inner fragmentation - the multitude of feelings and urges, the freedom to be many ...
I think that the best praise a book can get is having the reader think to himself ?this is something that I have never read?, and this is what made Freshwater for me such an outstanding experience, the fact that I had no prior book that I could compare it to, it was completely new ...
I did an unusual thing before writing this review, I looked at what other people have said about the book. Usually I like coming to a book without any advance knowledge and reviewing it without any awareness of its reception, but this time I was curious. It is a hard book to pin down, ...
Freshwater is the semi-autobiographical account of a young woman suffering from multiple personality disorder after a traumatic event. Steeped in Igbo tradition the main character Ada lives a life straddling two worlds. As the daughter of the serpent goddess Ala, she is born with ?on...
This was an intense read on so many levels. It?s strange but in a way that makes (mostly) perfect sense. The many facets of a person. The inner characters that live inside all of us. It is written in a completely unique and transformative way both contemporary and traditional. A ...
Having been a follower of Akwaeke Emezi on Instagram for some time, I was thrilled to see she'd written a novel. I expected it to be a reflection of the beautiful images and energy she floods us with on her Instagram feed. My oh my - I had no idea this book would be the exact opposite....
A unique examination of painful adolescence, Freshwater is bewitching, bewildering and arresting in equal measure. The novel combines an almost stream-of-consciousness narrative style with the central conceit of the multiple narrators being spirits or deities that inhabit the protagoni...
Review to come.....need to gather my thoughts about this one. ...
No matter how mad it sounded, the things that were happening in my head were real and had been happening for a very long time. After all the doctors and the diagnoses and the hospitals, this thing of being an ?gbanje, a child of Ala - that was the only path that brought me any peace....
Content Warning: Rape, Sexual Abuse, Suicide, Substance Abuse, Self Harm didn't know what I was in for when I started this reading this road map into Ada's mind. Ada is a woman whose group of identities control and direct her life. The spectacular prose morphed this explorat...
3.5 stars Right up frint I'm going to say that Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi will not be right for everyone - but then again which book is? It took me a while to understand what I was reading, to figure out who was narrating the story and I had to concentrate at all times. H...
#RWLChallenge: A Book with a neurodiverse main character of colour (own voices). Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for approving my request for a free digital copy in exchange for a review. TW: Rape Representation for: PTSD, Multiple Personality Disorder This book is too ...
Akwaeke Emezi?s debut is one of the most compelling?dare I say, bewitching?literary novels of recent years, largely a function of its incantatory prose and idiosyncratic narrative style. Its hero, Ada, is no mere mortal sufferer of multiple personalities but rather an Igbo deity ...
This is a very difficult book for me to review. It comes from a world that is very different to my own. There is a clue in the author description: "Akwaeke Emezi is an Igbo and Tamil writer and artist based in liminal spaces." Then there is an interview in which the author refers...
Still cementing my thoughts on this, but the long story short is: I didn't like this novel- the writing and execution. There was a lot more telling than showing with minimal buildup and character development. -------------------------- My interest in this novel is rooted in being a f...
Thank you to Netgalley and publisher for granting me this request of getting a free e-copy in exchange for a review. Just a disclaimer: my review does absolutely nothing for the book. It is far too brilliant. We'd need an entire day and a glass of wine or a cup of tea on an open ver...
i finished this some time ago. i'm waiting to find the words to say what it meant to me, and what it means, in general, in my opinion. it's not a book for everyone, but if you are part of a multiple reality or experience dissociation, you should probably read it immediately. if you lik...
Ada wanted a reason, a better explanation. We were not enough. We were too strange, She had been raised by humans, medical ones at hat. So instead she read lists of diagnostic criteria, things like disruptions of identity, self-damaging impulsivity, emotional instability and mood swin...
I cannot put into words properly my thoughts on this novel. What I honestly think is it is masterfully written. Yes, I highly recommend for you to read it. Might I add, read without reading any reviews. I look forward to reading more works from Akwaeke. ...
When I got the depths of this novel, here during these dark hours, I was blown away! My eyes were misty at the end. It?s absolutely the most brilliant creative book written of its kind .... It became personal to me....looking back at my own journey- my own struggles - my own fight ...
It?s not easy to persuade a human to end their life ? they?re very attached to it, even when it makes them miserable, and Ada was no different. But it?s not the decision to cross back that?s difficult; it?s the crossing itself. Akwaeke Emezi?s Freshwater is a novel of ...
This was absolutely stunning. From the very first page I knew I was in for something extraordinary and unlike anything I have ever read. This debut combines many things I adore in books: unconventional framing and unreliable narrators, a story that gets recontextualized constantly and ...
5? DEBUT! ?Dedication To those of us with one foot on the other side." ?By the time she (our body) struggled out into the world, slick and louder than a village of storms, the gates were left open. We should have been anchored in her by then, asleep inside her membranes and...
4 fresh, imaginative stars to Freshwater! The most creative book I?ve read this year! ? ? ? ? I have read nothing like Freshwater before. It is hard to categorize. It is literary fiction, but what else? Magical realism? Mysticism? The author noted at the end that this...
Freshwater is a stunning novel, one that I dove into and couldn't surface out of for a while. It's like a pool of dark water that you don't really even want to get out of. And I was sad when the book finished - despite it being quite a violent and shaking experience. I am not lying whe...
How to review this, how to review this............ The first 50 pages or so of this book were really tough for me. I felt like I was physically fighting the book, trying to wrestle it into submission. After the initial struggle, I fell into a somewhat uneasy rhythm with the story bu...
It's hard to talk about something that has no precedent. Freshwater is utterly unique, and the result is breathtaking. It's a dark, sensual, and thoughtful novel about a young woman coming to terms with and accepting the multiple identities that define her. The details of Ada's life...
!!! https://africanbookaddict.com/2018/02... If I had known this book was as evil, dark and sinful as it was, I probably wouldn?t have bothered to read it. But now that I?ve marinated the story in my mind for a while, I can confidently declare that Freshwater is so much more tha...
This is a startlingly raw and dark novel about spirituality, abuse, trauma and mental illness. In this fresh perspective, debut novelist Akwaeke Emezi embeds ogbanje, or nonhuman entities, within Ada, a girl born to parents who had prayed to the God Ala for a daughter. Ala, a serpentin...
I was pulled in to this story (narrated by the author) of Ada, who is a gift from the (plural) Igbo serpent god to her parents for praying the right way. But because they were the child, the god(s) own her, and are always with her. There is a disturbing description of it at the beginni...
Akwaeke Emezi Is a "5 Under 35" Honoree 2018 of the National Book Foundation "Freshwater" cleverly discusses the human mind by inquiring what actually constitutes "mental illness": To what degree is our inner fragmentation - the multitude of feelings and urges, the freedom to be many ...
I think that the best praise a book can get is having the reader think to himself ?this is something that I have never read?, and this is what made Freshwater for me such an outstanding experience, the fact that I had no prior book that I could compare it to, it was completely new ...
I did an unusual thing before writing this review, I looked at what other people have said about the book. Usually I like coming to a book without any advance knowledge and reviewing it without any awareness of its reception, but this time I was curious. It is a hard book to pin down, ...
Freshwater is the semi-autobiographical account of a young woman suffering from multiple personality disorder after a traumatic event. Steeped in Igbo tradition the main character Ada lives a life straddling two worlds. As the daughter of the serpent goddess Ala, she is born with ?on...
This was an intense read on so many levels. It?s strange but in a way that makes (mostly) perfect sense. The many facets of a person. The inner characters that live inside all of us. It is written in a completely unique and transformative way both contemporary and traditional. A ...
Having been a follower of Akwaeke Emezi on Instagram for some time, I was thrilled to see she'd written a novel. I expected it to be a reflection of the beautiful images and energy she floods us with on her Instagram feed. My oh my - I had no idea this book would be the exact opposite....
When I got the depths of this novel, here during these dark hours, I was blown away! My eyes were misty at the end. It?s absolutely the most brilliant creative book written of its kind .... It became personal to me....looking back at my own journey- my own struggles - my own fight ...
It?s not easy to persuade a human to end their life ? they?re very attached to it, even when it makes them miserable, and Ada was no different. But it?s not the decision to cross back that?s difficult; it?s the crossing itself. Akwaeke Emezi?s Freshwater is a novel of ...
This was absolutely stunning. From the very first page I knew I was in for something extraordinary and unlike anything I have ever read. This debut combines many things I adore in books: unconventional framing and unreliable narrators, a story that gets recontextualized constantly and ...
5? DEBUT! ?Dedication To those of us with one foot on the other side." ?By the time she (our body) struggled out into the world, slick and louder than a village of storms, the gates were left open. We should have been anchored in her by then, asleep inside her membranes and...
4 fresh, imaginative stars to Freshwater! The most creative book I?ve read this year! ? ? ? ? I have read nothing like Freshwater before. It is hard to categorize. It is literary fiction, but what else? Magical realism? Mysticism? The author noted at the end that this...
When I got the depths of this novel, here during these dark hours, I was blown away! My eyes were misty at the end. It?s absolutely the most brilliant creative book written of its kind .... It became personal to me....looking back at my own journey- my own struggles - my own fight ...
It?s not easy to persuade a human to end their life ? they?re very attached to it, even when it makes them miserable, and Ada was no different. But it?s not the decision to cross back that?s difficult; it?s the crossing itself. Akwaeke Emezi?s Freshwater is a novel of ...
This was absolutely stunning. From the very first page I knew I was in for something extraordinary and unlike anything I have ever read. This debut combines many things I adore in books: unconventional framing and unreliable narrators, a story that gets recontextualized constantly and ...
5? DEBUT! ?Dedication To those of us with one foot on the other side." ?By the time she (our body) struggled out into the world, slick and louder than a village of storms, the gates were left open. We should have been anchored in her by then, asleep inside her membranes and...
4 fresh, imaginative stars to Freshwater! The most creative book I?ve read this year! ? ? ? ? I have read nothing like Freshwater before. It is hard to categorize. It is literary fiction, but what else? Magical realism? Mysticism? The author noted at the end that this...
Freshwater is a stunning novel, one that I dove into and couldn't surface out of for a while. It's like a pool of dark water that you don't really even want to get out of. And I was sad when the book finished - despite it being quite a violent and shaking experience. I am not lying whe...
How to review this, how to review this............ The first 50 pages or so of this book were really tough for me. I felt like I was physically fighting the book, trying to wrestle it into submission. After the initial struggle, I fell into a somewhat uneasy rhythm with the story bu...
It's hard to talk about something that has no precedent. Freshwater is utterly unique, and the result is breathtaking. It's a dark, sensual, and thoughtful novel about a young woman coming to terms with and accepting the multiple identities that define her. The details of Ada's life...
!!! https://africanbookaddict.com/2018/02... If I had known this book was as evil, dark and sinful as it was, I probably wouldn?t have bothered to read it. But now that I?ve marinated the story in my mind for a while, I can confidently declare that Freshwater is so much more tha...
This is a startlingly raw and dark novel about spirituality, abuse, trauma and mental illness. In this fresh perspective, debut novelist Akwaeke Emezi embeds ogbanje, or nonhuman entities, within Ada, a girl born to parents who had prayed to the God Ala for a daughter. Ala, a serpentin...
I was pulled in to this story (narrated by the author) of Ada, who is a gift from the (plural) Igbo serpent god to her parents for praying the right way. But because they were the child, the god(s) own her, and are always with her. There is a disturbing description of it at the beginni...
Akwaeke Emezi Is a "5 Under 35" Honoree 2018 of the National Book Foundation "Freshwater" cleverly discusses the human mind by inquiring what actually constitutes "mental illness": To what degree is our inner fragmentation - the multitude of feelings and urges, the freedom to be many ...
I think that the best praise a book can get is having the reader think to himself ?this is something that I have never read?, and this is what made Freshwater for me such an outstanding experience, the fact that I had no prior book that I could compare it to, it was completely new ...
I did an unusual thing before writing this review, I looked at what other people have said about the book. Usually I like coming to a book without any advance knowledge and reviewing it without any awareness of its reception, but this time I was curious. It is a hard book to pin down, ...
Freshwater is the semi-autobiographical account of a young woman suffering from multiple personality disorder after a traumatic event. Steeped in Igbo tradition the main character Ada lives a life straddling two worlds. As the daughter of the serpent goddess Ala, she is born with ?on...
When I got the depths of this novel, here during these dark hours, I was blown away! My eyes were misty at the end. It?s absolutely the most brilliant creative book written of its kind .... It became personal to me....looking back at my own journey- my own struggles - my own fight ...
It?s not easy to persuade a human to end their life ? they?re very attached to it, even when it makes them miserable, and Ada was no different. But it?s not the decision to cross back that?s difficult; it?s the crossing itself. Akwaeke Emezi?s Freshwater is a novel of ...
This was absolutely stunning. From the very first page I knew I was in for something extraordinary and unlike anything I have ever read. This debut combines many things I adore in books: unconventional framing and unreliable narrators, a story that gets recontextualized constantly and ...
5? DEBUT! ?Dedication To those of us with one foot on the other side." ?By the time she (our body) struggled out into the world, slick and louder than a village of storms, the gates were left open. We should have been anchored in her by then, asleep inside her membranes and...
4 fresh, imaginative stars to Freshwater! The most creative book I?ve read this year! ? ? ? ? I have read nothing like Freshwater before. It is hard to categorize. It is literary fiction, but what else? Magical realism? Mysticism? The author noted at the end that this...
Freshwater is a stunning novel, one that I dove into and couldn't surface out of for a while. It's like a pool of dark water that you don't really even want to get out of. And I was sad when the book finished - despite it being quite a violent and shaking experience. I am not lying whe...
How to review this, how to review this............ The first 50 pages or so of this book were really tough for me. I felt like I was physically fighting the book, trying to wrestle it into submission. After the initial struggle, I fell into a somewhat uneasy rhythm with the story bu...
It's hard to talk about something that has no precedent. Freshwater is utterly unique, and the result is breathtaking. It's a dark, sensual, and thoughtful novel about a young woman coming to terms with and accepting the multiple identities that define her. The details of Ada's life...
!!! https://africanbookaddict.com/2018/02... If I had known this book was as evil, dark and sinful as it was, I probably wouldn?t have bothered to read it. But now that I?ve marinated the story in my mind for a while, I can confidently declare that Freshwater is so much more tha...
This is a startlingly raw and dark novel about spirituality, abuse, trauma and mental illness. In this fresh perspective, debut novelist Akwaeke Emezi embeds ogbanje, or nonhuman entities, within Ada, a girl born to parents who had prayed to the God Ala for a daughter. Ala, a serpentin...
I was pulled in to this story (narrated by the author) of Ada, who is a gift from the (plural) Igbo serpent god to her parents for praying the right way. But because they were the child, the god(s) own her, and are always with her. There is a disturbing description of it at the beginni...
Akwaeke Emezi Is a "5 Under 35" Honoree 2018 of the National Book Foundation "Freshwater" cleverly discusses the human mind by inquiring what actually constitutes "mental illness": To what degree is our inner fragmentation - the multitude of feelings and urges, the freedom to be many ...
I think that the best praise a book can get is having the reader think to himself ?this is something that I have never read?, and this is what made Freshwater for me such an outstanding experience, the fact that I had no prior book that I could compare it to, it was completely new ...
I did an unusual thing before writing this review, I looked at what other people have said about the book. Usually I like coming to a book without any advance knowledge and reviewing it without any awareness of its reception, but this time I was curious. It is a hard book to pin down, ...
Freshwater is the semi-autobiographical account of a young woman suffering from multiple personality disorder after a traumatic event. Steeped in Igbo tradition the main character Ada lives a life straddling two worlds. As the daughter of the serpent goddess Ala, she is born with ?on...
This was an intense read on so many levels. It?s strange but in a way that makes (mostly) perfect sense. The many facets of a person. The inner characters that live inside all of us. It is written in a completely unique and transformative way both contemporary and traditional. A ...
Having been a follower of Akwaeke Emezi on Instagram for some time, I was thrilled to see she'd written a novel. I expected it to be a reflection of the beautiful images and energy she floods us with on her Instagram feed. My oh my - I had no idea this book would be the exact opposite....
A unique examination of painful adolescence, Freshwater is bewitching, bewildering and arresting in equal measure. The novel combines an almost stream-of-consciousness narrative style with the central conceit of the multiple narrators being spirits or deities that inhabit the protagoni...
Review to come.....need to gather my thoughts about this one. ...
No matter how mad it sounded, the things that were happening in my head were real and had been happening for a very long time. After all the doctors and the diagnoses and the hospitals, this thing of being an ?gbanje, a child of Ala - that was the only path that brought me any peace....
Content Warning: Rape, Sexual Abuse, Suicide, Substance Abuse, Self Harm didn't know what I was in for when I started this reading this road map into Ada's mind. Ada is a woman whose group of identities control and direct her life. The spectacular prose morphed this explorat...
3.5 stars Right up frint I'm going to say that Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi will not be right for everyone - but then again which book is? It took me a while to understand what I was reading, to figure out who was narrating the story and I had to concentrate at all times. H...
#RWLChallenge: A Book with a neurodiverse main character of colour (own voices). Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for approving my request for a free digital copy in exchange for a review. TW: Rape Representation for: PTSD, Multiple Personality Disorder This book is too ...
Akwaeke Emezi?s debut is one of the most compelling?dare I say, bewitching?literary novels of recent years, largely a function of its incantatory prose and idiosyncratic narrative style. Its hero, Ada, is no mere mortal sufferer of multiple personalities but rather an Igbo deity ...
This is a very difficult book for me to review. It comes from a world that is very different to my own. There is a clue in the author description: "Akwaeke Emezi is an Igbo and Tamil writer and artist based in liminal spaces." Then there is an interview in which the author refers...
When I got the depths of this novel, here during these dark hours, I was blown away! My eyes were misty at the end. It?s absolutely the most brilliant creative book written of its kind .... It became personal to me....looking back at my own journey- my own struggles - my own fight ...
It?s not easy to persuade a human to end their life ? they?re very attached to it, even when it makes them miserable, and Ada was no different. But it?s not the decision to cross back that?s difficult; it?s the crossing itself. Akwaeke Emezi?s Freshwater is a novel of ...
This was absolutely stunning. From the very first page I knew I was in for something extraordinary and unlike anything I have ever read. This debut combines many things I adore in books: unconventional framing and unreliable narrators, a story that gets recontextualized constantly and ...
5? DEBUT! ?Dedication To those of us with one foot on the other side." ?By the time she (our body) struggled out into the world, slick and louder than a village of storms, the gates were left open. We should have been anchored in her by then, asleep inside her membranes and...
4 fresh, imaginative stars to Freshwater! The most creative book I?ve read this year! ? ? ? ? I have read nothing like Freshwater before. It is hard to categorize. It is literary fiction, but what else? Magical realism? Mysticism? The author noted at the end that this...
Freshwater is a stunning novel, one that I dove into and couldn't surface out of for a while. It's like a pool of dark water that you don't really even want to get out of. And I was sad when the book finished - despite it being quite a violent and shaking experience. I am not lying whe...
How to review this, how to review this............ The first 50 pages or so of this book were really tough for me. I felt like I was physically fighting the book, trying to wrestle it into submission. After the initial struggle, I fell into a somewhat uneasy rhythm with the story bu...
It's hard to talk about something that has no precedent. Freshwater is utterly unique, and the result is breathtaking. It's a dark, sensual, and thoughtful novel about a young woman coming to terms with and accepting the multiple identities that define her. The details of Ada's life...
!!! https://africanbookaddict.com/2018/02... If I had known this book was as evil, dark and sinful as it was, I probably wouldn?t have bothered to read it. But now that I?ve marinated the story in my mind for a while, I can confidently declare that Freshwater is so much more tha...
This is a startlingly raw and dark novel about spirituality, abuse, trauma and mental illness. In this fresh perspective, debut novelist Akwaeke Emezi embeds ogbanje, or nonhuman entities, within Ada, a girl born to parents who had prayed to the God Ala for a daughter. Ala, a serpentin...
I was pulled in to this story (narrated by the author) of Ada, who is a gift from the (plural) Igbo serpent god to her parents for praying the right way. But because they were the child, the god(s) own her, and are always with her. There is a disturbing description of it at the beginni...
Akwaeke Emezi Is a "5 Under 35" Honoree 2018 of the National Book Foundation "Freshwater" cleverly discusses the human mind by inquiring what actually constitutes "mental illness": To what degree is our inner fragmentation - the multitude of feelings and urges, the freedom to be many ...
I think that the best praise a book can get is having the reader think to himself ?this is something that I have never read?, and this is what made Freshwater for me such an outstanding experience, the fact that I had no prior book that I could compare it to, it was completely new ...
I did an unusual thing before writing this review, I looked at what other people have said about the book. Usually I like coming to a book without any advance knowledge and reviewing it without any awareness of its reception, but this time I was curious. It is a hard book to pin down, ...
Freshwater is the semi-autobiographical account of a young woman suffering from multiple personality disorder after a traumatic event. Steeped in Igbo tradition the main character Ada lives a life straddling two worlds. As the daughter of the serpent goddess Ala, she is born with ?on...
This was an intense read on so many levels. It?s strange but in a way that makes (mostly) perfect sense. The many facets of a person. The inner characters that live inside all of us. It is written in a completely unique and transformative way both contemporary and traditional. A ...
Having been a follower of Akwaeke Emezi on Instagram for some time, I was thrilled to see she'd written a novel. I expected it to be a reflection of the beautiful images and energy she floods us with on her Instagram feed. My oh my - I had no idea this book would be the exact opposite....
A unique examination of painful adolescence, Freshwater is bewitching, bewildering and arresting in equal measure. The novel combines an almost stream-of-consciousness narrative style with the central conceit of the multiple narrators being spirits or deities that inhabit the protagoni...
Review to come.....need to gather my thoughts about this one. ...
No matter how mad it sounded, the things that were happening in my head were real and had been happening for a very long time. After all the doctors and the diagnoses and the hospitals, this thing of being an ?gbanje, a child of Ala - that was the only path that brought me any peace....
Content Warning: Rape, Sexual Abuse, Suicide, Substance Abuse, Self Harm didn't know what I was in for when I started this reading this road map into Ada's mind. Ada is a woman whose group of identities control and direct her life. The spectacular prose morphed this explorat...
3.5 stars Right up frint I'm going to say that Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi will not be right for everyone - but then again which book is? It took me a while to understand what I was reading, to figure out who was narrating the story and I had to concentrate at all times. H...
#RWLChallenge: A Book with a neurodiverse main character of colour (own voices). Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for approving my request for a free digital copy in exchange for a review. TW: Rape Representation for: PTSD, Multiple Personality Disorder This book is too ...
Akwaeke Emezi?s debut is one of the most compelling?dare I say, bewitching?literary novels of recent years, largely a function of its incantatory prose and idiosyncratic narrative style. Its hero, Ada, is no mere mortal sufferer of multiple personalities but rather an Igbo deity ...
This is a very difficult book for me to review. It comes from a world that is very different to my own. There is a clue in the author description: "Akwaeke Emezi is an Igbo and Tamil writer and artist based in liminal spaces." Then there is an interview in which the author refers...
Still cementing my thoughts on this, but the long story short is: I didn't like this novel- the writing and execution. There was a lot more telling than showing with minimal buildup and character development. -------------------------- My interest in this novel is rooted in being a f...
Thank you to Netgalley and publisher for granting me this request of getting a free e-copy in exchange for a review. Just a disclaimer: my review does absolutely nothing for the book. It is far too brilliant. We'd need an entire day and a glass of wine or a cup of tea on an open ver...
i finished this some time ago. i'm waiting to find the words to say what it meant to me, and what it means, in general, in my opinion. it's not a book for everyone, but if you are part of a multiple reality or experience dissociation, you should probably read it immediately. if you lik...
Ada wanted a reason, a better explanation. We were not enough. We were too strange, She had been raised by humans, medical ones at hat. So instead she read lists of diagnostic criteria, things like disruptions of identity, self-damaging impulsivity, emotional instability and mood swin...
When I got the depths of this novel, here during these dark hours, I was blown away! My eyes were misty at the end. It?s absolutely the most brilliant creative book written of its kind .... It became personal to me....looking back at my own journey- my own struggles - my own fight ...
It?s not easy to persuade a human to end their life ? they?re very attached to it, even when it makes them miserable, and Ada was no different. But it?s not the decision to cross back that?s difficult; it?s the crossing itself. Akwaeke Emezi?s Freshwater is a novel of ...
This was absolutely stunning. From the very first page I knew I was in for something extraordinary and unlike anything I have ever read. This debut combines many things I adore in books: unconventional framing and unreliable narrators, a story that gets recontextualized constantly and ...
5? DEBUT! ?Dedication To those of us with one foot on the other side." ?By the time she (our body) struggled out into the world, slick and louder than a village of storms, the gates were left open. We should have been anchored in her by then, asleep inside her membranes and...
4 fresh, imaginative stars to Freshwater! The most creative book I?ve read this year! ? ? ? ? I have read nothing like Freshwater before. It is hard to categorize. It is literary fiction, but what else? Magical realism? Mysticism? The author noted at the end that this...
Freshwater is a stunning novel, one that I dove into and couldn't surface out of for a while. It's like a pool of dark water that you don't really even want to get out of. And I was sad when the book finished - despite it being quite a violent and shaking experience. I am not lying whe...
How to review this, how to review this............ The first 50 pages or so of this book were really tough for me. I felt like I was physically fighting the book, trying to wrestle it into submission. After the initial struggle, I fell into a somewhat uneasy rhythm with the story bu...
It's hard to talk about something that has no precedent. Freshwater is utterly unique, and the result is breathtaking. It's a dark, sensual, and thoughtful novel about a young woman coming to terms with and accepting the multiple identities that define her. The details of Ada's life...
!!! https://africanbookaddict.com/2018/02... If I had known this book was as evil, dark and sinful as it was, I probably wouldn?t have bothered to read it. But now that I?ve marinated the story in my mind for a while, I can confidently declare that Freshwater is so much more tha...
This is a startlingly raw and dark novel about spirituality, abuse, trauma and mental illness. In this fresh perspective, debut novelist Akwaeke Emezi embeds ogbanje, or nonhuman entities, within Ada, a girl born to parents who had prayed to the God Ala for a daughter. Ala, a serpentin...
I was pulled in to this story (narrated by the author) of Ada, who is a gift from the (plural) Igbo serpent god to her parents for praying the right way. But because they were the child, the god(s) own her, and are always with her. There is a disturbing description of it at the beginni...
Akwaeke Emezi Is a "5 Under 35" Honoree 2018 of the National Book Foundation "Freshwater" cleverly discusses the human mind by inquiring what actually constitutes "mental illness": To what degree is our inner fragmentation - the multitude of feelings and urges, the freedom to be many ...
I think that the best praise a book can get is having the reader think to himself ?this is something that I have never read?, and this is what made Freshwater for me such an outstanding experience, the fact that I had no prior book that I could compare it to, it was completely new ...
I did an unusual thing before writing this review, I looked at what other people have said about the book. Usually I like coming to a book without any advance knowledge and reviewing it without any awareness of its reception, but this time I was curious. It is a hard book to pin down, ...
Freshwater is the semi-autobiographical account of a young woman suffering from multiple personality disorder after a traumatic event. Steeped in Igbo tradition the main character Ada lives a life straddling two worlds. As the daughter of the serpent goddess Ala, she is born with ?on...
This was an intense read on so many levels. It?s strange but in a way that makes (mostly) perfect sense. The many facets of a person. The inner characters that live inside all of us. It is written in a completely unique and transformative way both contemporary and traditional. A ...
Having been a follower of Akwaeke Emezi on Instagram for some time, I was thrilled to see she'd written a novel. I expected it to be a reflection of the beautiful images and energy she floods us with on her Instagram feed. My oh my - I had no idea this book would be the exact opposite....
A unique examination of painful adolescence, Freshwater is bewitching, bewildering and arresting in equal measure. The novel combines an almost stream-of-consciousness narrative style with the central conceit of the multiple narrators being spirits or deities that inhabit the protagoni...
Review to come.....need to gather my thoughts about this one. ...
No matter how mad it sounded, the things that were happening in my head were real and had been happening for a very long time. After all the doctors and the diagnoses and the hospitals, this thing of being an ?gbanje, a child of Ala - that was the only path that brought me any peace....
Content Warning: Rape, Sexual Abuse, Suicide, Substance Abuse, Self Harm didn't know what I was in for when I started this reading this road map into Ada's mind. Ada is a woman whose group of identities control and direct her life. The spectacular prose morphed this explorat...
3.5 stars Right up frint I'm going to say that Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi will not be right for everyone - but then again which book is? It took me a while to understand what I was reading, to figure out who was narrating the story and I had to concentrate at all times. H...
#RWLChallenge: A Book with a neurodiverse main character of colour (own voices). Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for approving my request for a free digital copy in exchange for a review. TW: Rape Representation for: PTSD, Multiple Personality Disorder This book is too ...
When I got the depths of this novel, here during these dark hours, I was blown away! My eyes were misty at the end. It?s absolutely the most brilliant creative book written of its kind .... It became personal to me....looking back at my own journey- my own struggles - my own fight ...
It?s not easy to persuade a human to end their life ? they?re very attached to it, even when it makes them miserable, and Ada was no different. But it?s not the decision to cross back that?s difficult; it?s the crossing itself. Akwaeke Emezi?s Freshwater is a novel of ...
This was absolutely stunning. From the very first page I knew I was in for something extraordinary and unlike anything I have ever read. This debut combines many things I adore in books: unconventional framing and unreliable narrators, a story that gets recontextualized constantly and ...
When I got the depths of this novel, here during these dark hours, I was blown away! My eyes were misty at the end. It?s absolutely the most brilliant creative book written of its kind .... It became personal to me....looking back at my own journey- my own struggles - my own fight ...
It?s not easy to persuade a human to end their life ? they?re very attached to it, even when it makes them miserable, and Ada was no different. But it?s not the decision to cross back that?s difficult; it?s the crossing itself. Akwaeke Emezi?s Freshwater is a novel of ...
This was absolutely stunning. From the very first page I knew I was in for something extraordinary and unlike anything I have ever read. This debut combines many things I adore in books: unconventional framing and unreliable narrators, a story that gets recontextualized constantly and ...
5? DEBUT! ?Dedication To those of us with one foot on the other side." ?By the time she (our body) struggled out into the world, slick and louder than a village of storms, the gates were left open. We should have been anchored in her by then, asleep inside her membranes and...
4 fresh, imaginative stars to Freshwater! The most creative book I?ve read this year! ? ? ? ? I have read nothing like Freshwater before. It is hard to categorize. It is literary fiction, but what else? Magical realism? Mysticism? The author noted at the end that this...
Freshwater is a stunning novel, one that I dove into and couldn't surface out of for a while. It's like a pool of dark water that you don't really even want to get out of. And I was sad when the book finished - despite it being quite a violent and shaking experience. I am not lying whe...
How to review this, how to review this............ The first 50 pages or so of this book were really tough for me. I felt like I was physically fighting the book, trying to wrestle it into submission. After the initial struggle, I fell into a somewhat uneasy rhythm with the story bu...
It's hard to talk about something that has no precedent. Freshwater is utterly unique, and the result is breathtaking. It's a dark, sensual, and thoughtful novel about a young woman coming to terms with and accepting the multiple identities that define her. The details of Ada's life...
!!! https://africanbookaddict.com/2018/02... If I had known this book was as evil, dark and sinful as it was, I probably wouldn?t have bothered to read it. But now that I?ve marinated the story in my mind for a while, I can confidently declare that Freshwater is so much more tha...
This is a startlingly raw and dark novel about spirituality, abuse, trauma and mental illness. In this fresh perspective, debut novelist Akwaeke Emezi embeds ogbanje, or nonhuman entities, within Ada, a girl born to parents who had prayed to the God Ala for a daughter. Ala, a serpentin...
I was pulled in to this story (narrated by the author) of Ada, who is a gift from the (plural) Igbo serpent god to her parents for praying the right way. But because they were the child, the god(s) own her, and are always with her. There is a disturbing description of it at the beginni...
Akwaeke Emezi Is a "5 Under 35" Honoree 2018 of the National Book Foundation "Freshwater" cleverly discusses the human mind by inquiring what actually constitutes "mental illness": To what degree is our inner fragmentation - the multitude of feelings and urges, the freedom to be many ...
I think that the best praise a book can get is having the reader think to himself ?this is something that I have never read?, and this is what made Freshwater for me such an outstanding experience, the fact that I had no prior book that I could compare it to, it was completely new ...
When I got the depths of this novel, here during these dark hours, I was blown away! My eyes were misty at the end. It?s absolutely the most brilliant creative book written of its kind .... It became personal to me....looking back at my own journey- my own struggles - my own fight ...
It?s not easy to persuade a human to end their life ? they?re very attached to it, even when it makes them miserable, and Ada was no different. But it?s not the decision to cross back that?s difficult; it?s the crossing itself. Akwaeke Emezi?s Freshwater is a novel of ...
This was absolutely stunning. From the very first page I knew I was in for something extraordinary and unlike anything I have ever read. This debut combines many things I adore in books: unconventional framing and unreliable narrators, a story that gets recontextualized constantly and ...
5? DEBUT! ?Dedication To those of us with one foot on the other side." ?By the time she (our body) struggled out into the world, slick and louder than a village of storms, the gates were left open. We should have been anchored in her by then, asleep inside her membranes and...
4 fresh, imaginative stars to Freshwater! The most creative book I?ve read this year! ? ? ? ? I have read nothing like Freshwater before. It is hard to categorize. It is literary fiction, but what else? Magical realism? Mysticism? The author noted at the end that this...
Freshwater is a stunning novel, one that I dove into and couldn't surface out of for a while. It's like a pool of dark water that you don't really even want to get out of. And I was sad when the book finished - despite it being quite a violent and shaking experience. I am not lying whe...
How to review this, how to review this............ The first 50 pages or so of this book were really tough for me. I felt like I was physically fighting the book, trying to wrestle it into submission. After the initial struggle, I fell into a somewhat uneasy rhythm with the story bu...
It's hard to talk about something that has no precedent. Freshwater is utterly unique, and the result is breathtaking. It's a dark, sensual, and thoughtful novel about a young woman coming to terms with and accepting the multiple identities that define her. The details of Ada's life...
!!! https://africanbookaddict.com/2018/02... If I had known this book was as evil, dark and sinful as it was, I probably wouldn?t have bothered to read it. But now that I?ve marinated the story in my mind for a while, I can confidently declare that Freshwater is so much more tha...
This is a startlingly raw and dark novel about spirituality, abuse, trauma and mental illness. In this fresh perspective, debut novelist Akwaeke Emezi embeds ogbanje, or nonhuman entities, within Ada, a girl born to parents who had prayed to the God Ala for a daughter. Ala, a serpentin...
I was pulled in to this story (narrated by the author) of Ada, who is a gift from the (plural) Igbo serpent god to her parents for praying the right way. But because they were the child, the god(s) own her, and are always with her. There is a disturbing description of it at the beginni...
Akwaeke Emezi Is a "5 Under 35" Honoree 2018 of the National Book Foundation "Freshwater" cleverly discusses the human mind by inquiring what actually constitutes "mental illness": To what degree is our inner fragmentation - the multitude of feelings and urges, the freedom to be many ...
I think that the best praise a book can get is having the reader think to himself ?this is something that I have never read?, and this is what made Freshwater for me such an outstanding experience, the fact that I had no prior book that I could compare it to, it was completely new ...
I did an unusual thing before writing this review, I looked at what other people have said about the book. Usually I like coming to a book without any advance knowledge and reviewing it without any awareness of its reception, but this time I was curious. It is a hard book to pin down, ...
Freshwater is the semi-autobiographical account of a young woman suffering from multiple personality disorder after a traumatic event. Steeped in Igbo tradition the main character Ada lives a life straddling two worlds. As the daughter of the serpent goddess Ala, she is born with ?on...
This was an intense read on so many levels. It?s strange but in a way that makes (mostly) perfect sense. The many facets of a person. The inner characters that live inside all of us. It is written in a completely unique and transformative way both contemporary and traditional. A ...
Having been a follower of Akwaeke Emezi on Instagram for some time, I was thrilled to see she'd written a novel. I expected it to be a reflection of the beautiful images and energy she floods us with on her Instagram feed. My oh my - I had no idea this book would be the exact opposite....
A unique examination of painful adolescence, Freshwater is bewitching, bewildering and arresting in equal measure. The novel combines an almost stream-of-consciousness narrative style with the central conceit of the multiple narrators being spirits or deities that inhabit the protagoni...
Review to come.....need to gather my thoughts about this one. ...
No matter how mad it sounded, the things that were happening in my head were real and had been happening for a very long time. After all the doctors and the diagnoses and the hospitals, this thing of being an ?gbanje, a child of Ala - that was the only path that brought me any peace....
Content Warning: Rape, Sexual Abuse, Suicide, Substance Abuse, Self Harm didn't know what I was in for when I started this reading this road map into Ada's mind. Ada is a woman whose group of identities control and direct her life. The spectacular prose morphed this explorat...
3.5 stars Right up frint I'm going to say that Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi will not be right for everyone - but then again which book is? It took me a while to understand what I was reading, to figure out who was narrating the story and I had to concentrate at all times. H...
When I got the depths of this novel, here during these dark hours, I was blown away! My eyes were misty at the end. It?s absolutely the most brilliant creative book written of its kind .... It became personal to me....looking back at my own journey- my own struggles - my own fight ...
It?s not easy to persuade a human to end their life ? they?re very attached to it, even when it makes them miserable, and Ada was no different. But it?s not the decision to cross back that?s difficult; it?s the crossing itself. Akwaeke Emezi?s Freshwater is a novel of ...
When I got the depths of this novel, here during these dark hours, I was blown away! My eyes were misty at the end. It?s absolutely the most brilliant creative book written of its kind .... It became personal to me....looking back at my own journey- my own struggles - my own fight ...
It?s not easy to persuade a human to end their life ? they?re very attached to it, even when it makes them miserable, and Ada was no different. But it?s not the decision to cross back that?s difficult; it?s the crossing itself. Akwaeke Emezi?s Freshwater is a novel of ...
This was absolutely stunning. From the very first page I knew I was in for something extraordinary and unlike anything I have ever read. This debut combines many things I adore in books: unconventional framing and unreliable narrators, a story that gets recontextualized constantly and ...
5? DEBUT! ?Dedication To those of us with one foot on the other side." ?By the time she (our body) struggled out into the world, slick and louder than a village of storms, the gates were left open. We should have been anchored in her by then, asleep inside her membranes and...
4 fresh, imaginative stars to Freshwater! The most creative book I?ve read this year! ? ? ? ? I have read nothing like Freshwater before. It is hard to categorize. It is literary fiction, but what else? Magical realism? Mysticism? The author noted at the end that this...
Freshwater is a stunning novel, one that I dove into and couldn't surface out of for a while. It's like a pool of dark water that you don't really even want to get out of. And I was sad when the book finished - despite it being quite a violent and shaking experience. I am not lying whe...
How to review this, how to review this............ The first 50 pages or so of this book were really tough for me. I felt like I was physically fighting the book, trying to wrestle it into submission. After the initial struggle, I fell into a somewhat uneasy rhythm with the story bu...
It's hard to talk about something that has no precedent. Freshwater is utterly unique, and the result is breathtaking. It's a dark, sensual, and thoughtful novel about a young woman coming to terms with and accepting the multiple identities that define her. The details of Ada's life...
!!! https://africanbookaddict.com/2018/02... If I had known this book was as evil, dark and sinful as it was, I probably wouldn?t have bothered to read it. But now that I?ve marinated the story in my mind for a while, I can confidently declare that Freshwater is so much more tha...
This is a startlingly raw and dark novel about spirituality, abuse, trauma and mental illness. In this fresh perspective, debut novelist Akwaeke Emezi embeds ogbanje, or nonhuman entities, within Ada, a girl born to parents who had prayed to the God Ala for a daughter. Ala, a serpentin...
I was pulled in to this story (narrated by the author) of Ada, who is a gift from the (plural) Igbo serpent god to her parents for praying the right way. But because they were the child, the god(s) own her, and are always with her. There is a disturbing description of it at the beginni...
Akwaeke Emezi Is a "5 Under 35" Honoree 2018 of the National Book Foundation "Freshwater" cleverly discusses the human mind by inquiring what actually constitutes "mental illness": To what degree is our inner fragmentation - the multitude of feelings and urges, the freedom to be many ...
I think that the best praise a book can get is having the reader think to himself ?this is something that I have never read?, and this is what made Freshwater for me such an outstanding experience, the fact that I had no prior book that I could compare it to, it was completely new ...
I did an unusual thing before writing this review, I looked at what other people have said about the book. Usually I like coming to a book without any advance knowledge and reviewing it without any awareness of its reception, but this time I was curious. It is a hard book to pin down, ...
Freshwater is the semi-autobiographical account of a young woman suffering from multiple personality disorder after a traumatic event. Steeped in Igbo tradition the main character Ada lives a life straddling two worlds. As the daughter of the serpent goddess Ala, she is born with ?on...
This was an intense read on so many levels. It?s strange but in a way that makes (mostly) perfect sense. The many facets of a person. The inner characters that live inside all of us. It is written in a completely unique and transformative way both contemporary and traditional. A ...
Having been a follower of Akwaeke Emezi on Instagram for some time, I was thrilled to see she'd written a novel. I expected it to be a reflection of the beautiful images and energy she floods us with on her Instagram feed. My oh my - I had no idea this book would be the exact opposite....
A unique examination of painful adolescence, Freshwater is bewitching, bewildering and arresting in equal measure. The novel combines an almost stream-of-consciousness narrative style with the central conceit of the multiple narrators being spirits or deities that inhabit the protagoni...
Review to come.....need to gather my thoughts about this one. ...
No matter how mad it sounded, the things that were happening in my head were real and had been happening for a very long time. After all the doctors and the diagnoses and the hospitals, this thing of being an ?gbanje, a child of Ala - that was the only path that brought me any peace....
Content Warning: Rape, Sexual Abuse, Suicide, Substance Abuse, Self Harm didn't know what I was in for when I started this reading this road map into Ada's mind. Ada is a woman whose group of identities control and direct her life. The spectacular prose morphed this explorat...
3.5 stars Right up frint I'm going to say that Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi will not be right for everyone - but then again which book is? It took me a while to understand what I was reading, to figure out who was narrating the story and I had to concentrate at all times. H...
#RWLChallenge: A Book with a neurodiverse main character of colour (own voices). Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for approving my request for a free digital copy in exchange for a review. TW: Rape Representation for: PTSD, Multiple Personality Disorder This book is too ...
Akwaeke Emezi?s debut is one of the most compelling?dare I say, bewitching?literary novels of recent years, largely a function of its incantatory prose and idiosyncratic narrative style. Its hero, Ada, is no mere mortal sufferer of multiple personalities but rather an Igbo deity ...
When I got the depths of this novel, here during these dark hours, I was blown away! My eyes were misty at the end. It?s absolutely the most brilliant creative book written of its kind .... It became personal to me....looking back at my own journey- my own struggles - my own fight ...
It?s not easy to persuade a human to end their life ? they?re very attached to it, even when it makes them miserable, and Ada was no different. But it?s not the decision to cross back that?s difficult; it?s the crossing itself. Akwaeke Emezi?s Freshwater is a novel of ...
This was absolutely stunning. From the very first page I knew I was in for something extraordinary and unlike anything I have ever read. This debut combines many things I adore in books: unconventional framing and unreliable narrators, a story that gets recontextualized constantly and ...
5? DEBUT! ?Dedication To those of us with one foot on the other side." ?By the time she (our body) struggled out into the world, slick and louder than a village of storms, the gates were left open. We should have been anchored in her by then, asleep inside her membranes and...
4 fresh, imaginative stars to Freshwater! The most creative book I?ve read this year! ? ? ? ? I have read nothing like Freshwater before. It is hard to categorize. It is literary fiction, but what else? Magical realism? Mysticism? The author noted at the end that this...
Freshwater is a stunning novel, one that I dove into and couldn't surface out of for a while. It's like a pool of dark water that you don't really even want to get out of. And I was sad when the book finished - despite it being quite a violent and shaking experience. I am not lying whe...
How to review this, how to review this............ The first 50 pages or so of this book were really tough for me. I felt like I was physically fighting the book, trying to wrestle it into submission. After the initial struggle, I fell into a somewhat uneasy rhythm with the story bu...
It's hard to talk about something that has no precedent. Freshwater is utterly unique, and the result is breathtaking. It's a dark, sensual, and thoughtful novel about a young woman coming to terms with and accepting the multiple identities that define her. The details of Ada's life...
!!! https://africanbookaddict.com/2018/02... If I had known this book was as evil, dark and sinful as it was, I probably wouldn?t have bothered to read it. But now that I?ve marinated the story in my mind for a while, I can confidently declare that Freshwater is so much more tha...
This is a startlingly raw and dark novel about spirituality, abuse, trauma and mental illness. In this fresh perspective, debut novelist Akwaeke Emezi embeds ogbanje, or nonhuman entities, within Ada, a girl born to parents who had prayed to the God Ala for a daughter. Ala, a serpentin...
When I got the depths of this novel, here during these dark hours, I was blown away! My eyes were misty at the end. It?s absolutely the most brilliant creative book written of its kind .... It became personal to me....looking back at my own journey- my own struggles - my own fight ...
It?s not easy to persuade a human to end their life ? they?re very attached to it, even when it makes them miserable, and Ada was no different. But it?s not the decision to cross back that?s difficult; it?s the crossing itself. Akwaeke Emezi?s Freshwater is a novel of ...
This was absolutely stunning. From the very first page I knew I was in for something extraordinary and unlike anything I have ever read. This debut combines many things I adore in books: unconventional framing and unreliable narrators, a story that gets recontextualized constantly and ...
5? DEBUT! ?Dedication To those of us with one foot on the other side." ?By the time she (our body) struggled out into the world, slick and louder than a village of storms, the gates were left open. We should have been anchored in her by then, asleep inside her membranes and...
4 fresh, imaginative stars to Freshwater! The most creative book I?ve read this year! ? ? ? ? I have read nothing like Freshwater before. It is hard to categorize. It is literary fiction, but what else? Magical realism? Mysticism? The author noted at the end that this...
Freshwater is a stunning novel, one that I dove into and couldn't surface out of for a while. It's like a pool of dark water that you don't really even want to get out of. And I was sad when the book finished - despite it being quite a violent and shaking experience. I am not lying whe...
How to review this, how to review this............ The first 50 pages or so of this book were really tough for me. I felt like I was physically fighting the book, trying to wrestle it into submission. After the initial struggle, I fell into a somewhat uneasy rhythm with the story bu...
It's hard to talk about something that has no precedent. Freshwater is utterly unique, and the result is breathtaking. It's a dark, sensual, and thoughtful novel about a young woman coming to terms with and accepting the multiple identities that define her. The details of Ada's life...
!!! https://africanbookaddict.com/2018/02... If I had known this book was as evil, dark and sinful as it was, I probably wouldn?t have bothered to read it. But now that I?ve marinated the story in my mind for a while, I can confidently declare that Freshwater is so much more tha...
This is a startlingly raw and dark novel about spirituality, abuse, trauma and mental illness. In this fresh perspective, debut novelist Akwaeke Emezi embeds ogbanje, or nonhuman entities, within Ada, a girl born to parents who had prayed to the God Ala for a daughter. Ala, a serpentin...
I was pulled in to this story (narrated by the author) of Ada, who is a gift from the (plural) Igbo serpent god to her parents for praying the right way. But because they were the child, the god(s) own her, and are always with her. There is a disturbing description of it at the beginni...
Akwaeke Emezi Is a "5 Under 35" Honoree 2018 of the National Book Foundation "Freshwater" cleverly discusses the human mind by inquiring what actually constitutes "mental illness": To what degree is our inner fragmentation - the multitude of feelings and urges, the freedom to be many ...
When I got the depths of this novel, here during these dark hours, I was blown away! My eyes were misty at the end. It?s absolutely the most brilliant creative book written of its kind .... It became personal to me....looking back at my own journey- my own struggles - my own fight ...
It?s not easy to persuade a human to end their life ? they?re very attached to it, even when it makes them miserable, and Ada was no different. But it?s not the decision to cross back that?s difficult; it?s the crossing itself. Akwaeke Emezi?s Freshwater is a novel of ...
This was absolutely stunning. From the very first page I knew I was in for something extraordinary and unlike anything I have ever read. This debut combines many things I adore in books: unconventional framing and unreliable narrators, a story that gets recontextualized constantly and ...
5? DEBUT! ?Dedication To those of us with one foot on the other side." ?By the time she (our body) struggled out into the world, slick and louder than a village of storms, the gates were left open. We should have been anchored in her by then, asleep inside her membranes and...
4 fresh, imaginative stars to Freshwater! The most creative book I?ve read this year! ? ? ? ? I have read nothing like Freshwater before. It is hard to categorize. It is literary fiction, but what else? Magical realism? Mysticism? The author noted at the end that this...
Freshwater is a stunning novel, one that I dove into and couldn't surface out of for a while. It's like a pool of dark water that you don't really even want to get out of. And I was sad when the book finished - despite it being quite a violent and shaking experience. I am not lying whe...
How to review this, how to review this............ The first 50 pages or so of this book were really tough for me. I felt like I was physically fighting the book, trying to wrestle it into submission. After the initial struggle, I fell into a somewhat uneasy rhythm with the story bu...
It's hard to talk about something that has no precedent. Freshwater is utterly unique, and the result is breathtaking. It's a dark, sensual, and thoughtful novel about a young woman coming to terms with and accepting the multiple identities that define her. The details of Ada's life...
!!! https://africanbookaddict.com/2018/02... If I had known this book was as evil, dark and sinful as it was, I probably wouldn?t have bothered to read it. But now that I?ve marinated the story in my mind for a while, I can confidently declare that Freshwater is so much more tha...
This is a startlingly raw and dark novel about spirituality, abuse, trauma and mental illness. In this fresh perspective, debut novelist Akwaeke Emezi embeds ogbanje, or nonhuman entities, within Ada, a girl born to parents who had prayed to the God Ala for a daughter. Ala, a serpentin...
I was pulled in to this story (narrated by the author) of Ada, who is a gift from the (plural) Igbo serpent god to her parents for praying the right way. But because they were the child, the god(s) own her, and are always with her. There is a disturbing description of it at the beginni...
Akwaeke Emezi Is a "5 Under 35" Honoree 2018 of the National Book Foundation "Freshwater" cleverly discusses the human mind by inquiring what actually constitutes "mental illness": To what degree is our inner fragmentation - the multitude of feelings and urges, the freedom to be many ...
I think that the best praise a book can get is having the reader think to himself ?this is something that I have never read?, and this is what made Freshwater for me such an outstanding experience, the fact that I had no prior book that I could compare it to, it was completely new ...
I did an unusual thing before writing this review, I looked at what other people have said about the book. Usually I like coming to a book without any advance knowledge and reviewing it without any awareness of its reception, but this time I was curious. It is a hard book to pin down, ...
Freshwater is the semi-autobiographical account of a young woman suffering from multiple personality disorder after a traumatic event. Steeped in Igbo tradition the main character Ada lives a life straddling two worlds. As the daughter of the serpent goddess Ala, she is born with ?on...
This was an intense read on so many levels. It?s strange but in a way that makes (mostly) perfect sense. The many facets of a person. The inner characters that live inside all of us. It is written in a completely unique and transformative way both contemporary and traditional. A ...
Having been a follower of Akwaeke Emezi on Instagram for some time, I was thrilled to see she'd written a novel. I expected it to be a reflection of the beautiful images and energy she floods us with on her Instagram feed. My oh my - I had no idea this book would be the exact opposite....
A unique examination of painful adolescence, Freshwater is bewitching, bewildering and arresting in equal measure. The novel combines an almost stream-of-consciousness narrative style with the central conceit of the multiple narrators being spirits or deities that inhabit the protagoni...
Review to come.....need to gather my thoughts about this one. ...
No matter how mad it sounded, the things that were happening in my head were real and had been happening for a very long time. After all the doctors and the diagnoses and the hospitals, this thing of being an ?gbanje, a child of Ala - that was the only path that brought me any peace....
Content Warning: Rape, Sexual Abuse, Suicide, Substance Abuse, Self Harm didn't know what I was in for when I started this reading this road map into Ada's mind. Ada is a woman whose group of identities control and direct her life. The spectacular prose morphed this explorat...
3.5 stars Right up frint I'm going to say that Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi will not be right for everyone - but then again which book is? It took me a while to understand what I was reading, to figure out who was narrating the story and I had to concentrate at all times. H...
#RWLChallenge: A Book with a neurodiverse main character of colour (own voices). Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for approving my request for a free digital copy in exchange for a review. TW: Rape Representation for: PTSD, Multiple Personality Disorder This book is too ...
Akwaeke Emezi?s debut is one of the most compelling?dare I say, bewitching?literary novels of recent years, largely a function of its incantatory prose and idiosyncratic narrative style. Its hero, Ada, is no mere mortal sufferer of multiple personalities but rather an Igbo deity ...
This is a very difficult book for me to review. It comes from a world that is very different to my own. There is a clue in the author description: "Akwaeke Emezi is an Igbo and Tamil writer and artist based in liminal spaces." Then there is an interview in which the author refers...
Still cementing my thoughts on this, but the long story short is: I didn't like this novel- the writing and execution. There was a lot more telling than showing with minimal buildup and character development. -------------------------- My interest in this novel is rooted in being a f...
Thank you to Netgalley and publisher for granting me this request of getting a free e-copy in exchange for a review. Just a disclaimer: my review does absolutely nothing for the book. It is far too brilliant. We'd need an entire day and a glass of wine or a cup of tea on an open ver...
