Freshwater

Scary in its realistic portrayal of a splintered mind. Nigerian culture & beliefs are featured quite a lot in this book, but it's easy to follow even with no prior exposure to the subjects. Rich, unique, and thrilling overall. An amazing book, and I'm looking forward to more from this author!

Never had I read, until today words that explain, detail and make sense of my metaphysical identity! To give breath to my experience brings a huge sigh of relief. I’m so appreciative for this woman and these words!

Pushes past the boundaries of western ideas of transness, and sanity. A very good read for those interested in decolonizing their mind on the topic of queerness and mental health.

Some books grab you by the soul and take you though dark holes of shadowy demons, and then propel you with the courage of a previous pilgrim to finally arrive at the other side. There you meet a version of yourself more raggedy, honest and brilliant than reality would deem possible. This book is not an autobiography, but a healing for humanity. A blessing to behold.

I found this novel a bit hard to follow. Very much one you need to fully pay attention to fully grasp. Akwaeke's soothing voice made this an easy listen, even threw the hard topics of mental disassociation, and rape. My heart aches for the author as I find myself wondering how much of this was novel and how much they truly experienced in their life. I applaud them for the courage to put life on paper, even if it was through a fictional lens.

This truly is an extrordinary novel -- the experience of which will depend significantly on the worldview of each reader.

The protagonist, Ada, has multiple personalities, personalities which are self-aware as spirits from within a specific tradition. Spirits who remember a time before they were confined within the meat body of the human girl Ada.

I first heard of the book through an online review, and that reviewer was unable to take this premise seriously. S/he had to approach the book solely as a depiction of psychological fragmentation. I, on the other hand, have known a person like Ada: someone whose multiple personalities had distinct spiritual identities, and who spoke of their shared mental space as a "cave" -- strikingly similar to the "marble room" that Ada and her spirits refer to. The fighting over the body, the need to reform the body to accommodate the identities of the spirits. . . those too are familiar to me. Each beautifully-written, emotionally challenging chapter brought with it for me a sense of shock as I encountered again and again experiences which I had heard of face-to-face.

Read it as a fantasy, as a psychological novel, or as a near documentary. . . it will still be a book well worth reading.

Emezi’s book is creative, innovatively structured, strange — and ultimately a bit difficult to navigate in spite of its brevity. Told in alternating voices, the author sets the literary bar quite high when it comes to spinning a complex tale in a cohesive and coherent way. I wanted to enjoy “Freshwater” more than I did, but I admire the author’s effort to tackle important topics in a unique way.

Absolutely unique and illuminating! This book is one that will stay with me for a while.

Series Info/Source: This is a stand alone book. I borrowed a copy of this on audiobook from the library.

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

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

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

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

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

My Summary (3.5/5): Overall this was a unique and visceral read that I respected but didn't really enjoy. The story is sexually very violent and fairly ambiguous. The reader is left uncertain as to whether or not Ada is struggling with a mental illness or an infestation of gods. I respect the poetic writing style and the intriguing magical realism feel, but the story was too violent, open-ended, and hard to follow for me.

kind of mind blowing. i loved it.

This is an utterly unique story, compellingly told.

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

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

A fascinating angle on mental illness and spirituality, too. I loved the scenes where the different characters talked to each other inside Ada's brain. Some of the "we" chapters were a bit dense for me, not having any knowledge of the religions they referenced, but overall I really enjoyed how this book struck a balance between experiment and good old fashioned college drama.

This is one of the current trend of very short literary novels, which is not my favorite trend in fiction (I'm fond of books I can have a good affair with), but in this case, the novel is so dense that it manages to fit just right within that space.

It's difficult to summarize Freshwater, which is semi-autobiographical, because it can be read two ways: through the lens of traditional Igbo spirituality (the author's primary focus) or via a Western psychiatric view, which readers will bring to it. The personalities within Ada view themselves as ogbanje--traditional spirits, that have come with her from birth. They are shaped by her trauma, and accompany her through self destruction.

At the beginning, the writing felt somewhat overworked, trying too hard to bring a particular tone and rhythm reflective of Nigerian/Igbo English, but as other voices enter the story, with their own personalities and language, it achieved a better balance. The story focuses much more on internal narrative than on dialogue, filtering events through Ada's personalities' points of view.

Stylistically brilliant, but as far as content goes, the book paints a disturbing portrait of a mentally ill woman clinging to a split personality to protect herself from sexual abuse but, instead, causing more abuse -- rationalizing it with belief in ancient African spirits and sacrifice. This illogical process is painful to read, but accurate of how mental illness works. The language is grim and bloody. The treatment of the protagonist is cold and cruel. The outcome is less than satisfying. Points for writing style, but the theme was brutal, and the resolution devoid of redemption.

One can try to imagine the transition, but in reality, have no idea what it is like. This book puts it into words in a raw and sublime way at the same time. (Translated from Spanish)

Unlike other reviewers, I struggled to understand what was happening in this autobiographical novel. I had to go back and reread the beginning. I didn't love it as many others did, but I did finish it and come to understand this was the author's way of understanding and coming to terms with herself, a bildingsroman of sorts, a fable about trauma, mental illness, and multiple personality disorder.

I picked up this book after reading PET, Emezi's young adult fantasy, which I liked very much.

When you come to understand Emezi's own experience, it is amazing that she has recovered and written so brilliantly. That she managed to live in the world, graduate from college, respond to her own understanding that she was a transgendered person who had been abused.

Her multiple personalities are called ogbanje, or spirits. One of them, Asughara, leads her to act out sexually in ways that Ada, herself, in her devout Catholicism, cannot.

Emezi will publish an actual memoir, Dear Senthuran, in June. It would be interesting to compare it to this book.

I had a really tough time getting into this book initially. There's no doubt that the voice of the narrative is interesting, but that doesn't mean it is not confusing. Trust me, it is. Told by the voices in Ada's head—are they personalities indicative of a mental illness or spiritual beings that battle for her attention—Freshwater does not stop to answer questions. This commitment to voice is good for the end result, because it really adds credibility to the narrative, but it does make for a somewhat difficult beginning.

In her debut novel, Akwaeke Emezi crafts a journey that is devastating and empowering. There is much in this story that can break a heart or turn a reader in disgust. Those avoiding difficult subjects in their reads should skip this one. Ultimately, however, Freshwater is a very spiritual tale, a battle for one soul. Despite the many dark moments, it becomes a display of strength and fulfillment. Through lyrical prose and the unrelenting voices, Freshwater explores what it is to be between two worlds—living and dead, Africa and America, Allah and Yeshua, peace and rage.

“The first madness was that we were born, that they stuffed a god into a bag of skin.”
I learned about Freshwater after someone (I don't remember who) quoted a short passage on twitter. Just a single sentence or two — too short to know what the story was about, but beautiful enough to make me long to read the book. It was not yet published at the time, so I watched and waited and clicked the preorder link as soon as it appeared, then I waited some more for this beautiful book to be printed and shipped to me.

It was every bit worth the wait, because this debut novel is gorgeous.
“There was a time before we had a body, when it was still building itself cell by cell inside the thin woman, meticulously producing organs, making systems.”
Born in Nigeria, Ada begins life with a fractured self, burdened with the weight of god creatures that have been bound into her flesh. Living "with one foot on the other side" she is a troubled and volatile child who grows into a troubled and volatile adult, with a tendency toward outbursts and self harm. As she grows and moves to America, where she experiences a traumatic event, new selves crystalize within her, each providing their own protections and hungers.

Much of the story is told from the point of view of these god creatures (or spirit beings), which have their own needs and desires beyond that of Ada herself. Their story and her story blends together, as they have been blended together in spirit and flesh. It's a fantastic rendering of having a fractured self, the confusing mix of desires and emotions that make up a person, the ways we work to protect and harm ourselves.
“I had arrived, flesh from flesh, true blood from true blood. I was the wildness under the skin, the skin into a weapon, the weapon over the flesh.”
The writing style in this book is lush and vibrant, evoking the energy and power of spirit realms represented in the voices of the gods the speak this story. It's gorgeous on every page, bringing into existence a story that is unsettling, surprising, and powerful. This is a novel I will return to again and again.

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

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

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

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

A very original debut novel. Ada was born with one foot in this world, and one in the other. She was a difficult child, but when she moves to America for school and has a traumatic experience, the spirits living inside her are born into her knowledge. Asugahara is destructive and controlling, interested in men and blood and making Ada suffer and pay. St Vincent is quieter but there, interested in women and uncomfortable in Ada's woman's body. Ada also talks to Yshwa (Jesus) and Allah.

Ada is always uncomfortable, and does not remember what she does when controlled by these spirits. She cuts herself, she has relationships and friends (one of whom seems to understand), she has surgery to modify her female body. She develops an eating disorder, and she tries to find her way back to Yshwa.

Is Ada mentally ill? Is she an ogbanje? Is she just struggling to come to terms with her queer identity, and to fit in? She does not know, and the tension between Ada and the spirits, and her mother, boyfriends, friends--that is what makes this book so original and fascinating.

I listened to this book on Hoopla, and the author is the performer. Her voice is mesmerizing, but I was confused a few times because the narrator changed but I did not realize it.

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

I might bump this one up to 5 - I need a few days to sit with it. This one's going to stay with me.

I kept hearing about this debut novel Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi. It’s relatively short but took me a whole month to get through as I kept putting it down and picking up other books.
It follows a girl Ada who is born in Nigeria with what is called ogbanje — gods from another world trapped in her mind. It sounds like magical realism, but it’s more of a spiritual way of explaining schizophrenia. Over a tumultuous childhood she moved to the US for college where the gods/voices multiply and become stronger. Many of the chapters are told in the voices of the gods. They all live in a marble room in her head.
My biggest issue with the book was the beginning and middle were very clearly set in reality. We learned about Ada’s parents, their divorce, her college experience meeting her roommate and then all those details fall away. She is having affairs all over the world, saving thousands of dollars for a plastic surgery, checking herself into a hospital for help and checking herself out, but there’s no mention of a job that pays for all these things or even where/how she lives. I understand that these feel irrelevant as she’s battling her gods, but I wasn’t able to understand her struggles without the context of her day-to-day life that was so detailed in the beginning.

Excellent and vibrantly fresh. Its a spiritual story of existence as many in between--a girl, gods and spirits. Madness. And then you get a sense for the spiritual journey that allows it to work, and finally for the depth and trauma that also makes it a psychological story.

Their prayers have been heard and the god Ala sent them a baby girl: Ada, named in honour of the generous goddess. Yet, it comes with a plus, Ada is not alone, she has got some characters living in her mind, still asleep, but eager to wake up and take over the body given to them. The first two to arrive and take care of Ada and her siblings in their Nigerian village. Later, in America, when another of the voices awakes and takes over control over Ada‘s body, things turn out differently. For the world outside, it is hidden what is going on inside Ada‘s head, once she tries to tell a therapist, however, the voices that possess her are stronger and find a way out of this dangerous situation.
Akwaeke Emezi‘s novel „Freshwater“ was all but easy to read for me. First of all, I had some difficulty understanding who is telling the story, it took me some time to figure out that the voices in Ada‘s head are the narrators. So, we are mostly inside her mind, but sometimes we get what happens outside, too.
You cannot really say that Ada is mad even though she hears voices and follows their command. It was especially when she hurt herself to calm down the first two voices, Smoke and Shadow, that was hard to endure. The third who made her act promiscuously wasn‘t much better. They are evil, after all, misusing an innocent human to fulfil their wishes and greed. I am not sure if it works like this with people hearing voices, even if it is somewhat different, this seems to be horrible. On the other hand, Ada obviously experienced some very bad incidents and the voices were somehow able to split those memories from her normal memory thus making her forget these experiences. Maybe this is the cause why the voices could develop after all.
It is always hard to like a novel if you detest the protagonist or narrator. Thus, „Freshwater“ is not a novel I could fall for easily. Still, I consider the topic highly interesting and, ultimately, the author found a convincing way of making the voices heard for us.