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Summary
Summary
An exhilarating and expansive new novel about fathers and sons, faith and friendship from National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree and Costa First Novel Award winning author Caleb Azumah Nelson
One of the most acclaimed and internationally bestselling "unforgettable" ( New York Times ) debuts of the 2021, Caleb Azumah Nelson's London-set love story Open Water took the US by storm and introduced the world to a salient and insightful new voice in fiction. Now, with his second novel Small Worlds , the prodigious Azumah Nelson brings another set of enduring characters to brilliant life in his signature rhythmic, melodic prose.
Set over the course of three summers, Small Worlds follows Stephen, a first-generation Londoner born to Ghanian immigrant parents, brother to Ray, and best friend to Adeline. On the cusp of big life changes, Stephen feels pressured to follow a certain path--a university degree, a move out of home--but when he decides instead to follow his first love, music, his world and family fractures in ways he didn't foresee. Now Stephen must find a path and peace for himself: a space he can feel beautiful, a space he can feel free.
Moving from London, England to Accra, Ghana and back again, Small Worlds is an exquisite and intimate new novel about the people and places we hold close, from one of the most "elegant, poetic" (CNN) and important voices of a generation.
Author Notes
Caleb Azumah Nelson is a British-Ghanaian writer and photographer, living in South East London. His short story, "Pray", was shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award. His debut Open Water won the Costa First Novel Award, the British Book Award for Debut Fiction, was a National Book Foundation "5 Under 35" and was named a best book of the year by TIME, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Library Journal, Literary Hub, and The Millions, among other places.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Nelson revisits the Southeast London setting of Open Water in this astonishing account of a young British Ghanaian man's dueling desires to please his parents and pursue his passion for music. The reader first meets narrator Stephen in church in summer 2010, where at 18 he's humbled and quieted by the call to prayer, describing it as the chance to "speak to someone who is both us and the people we want to be." When the music starts, though, Stephen doesn't need to be anywhere else or become anyone else. With a bass line "getting to the heart of things" and a "pianist play secret chords from the soul," he dances with his older brother, Raymond, their bond wordless and powerful. That night, Stephen and Raymond pursue their true calling, putting on a dance party with their friends and spinning old grime records. A year later, after Stephen has completed his first year of college, dancing provides relief from the pressure put on him by his father to prepare for a stable future, which comes to a head after Stephen announces he's dropping out. Nelson plays their confrontation beautifully, mixing Stephen's defiance with a yearning for acceptance, so when his father kicks him out of the house, the effect is even more devastating. Nelson's assured writing captures the pulse of a dance party, the heat of a family's bond, and the depth of spiritual fervor to conjure a story as infectious as a new favorite song. (July)
Guardian Review
Peckham, a district of south-east London formerly associated with substandard housing, tabloid reports of criminality and overpolicing, has been in the throes of a remarkable transformation over the last decade. Not only has it witnessed gentrification but, as seen in the recent film Rye Lane and in Caleb Azumah Nelson's novel Small Worlds, it is increasingly a site of inspiration for creative artists. Small Worlds, the follow-up to Nelson's multi-award-winning debut Open Water, focuses on Stephen, a teenage second-generation migrant of Ghanaian parents, Eric and Joy. Theirs is an involved and loving family. Stephen's closeness to his mother is especially apparent in their tender biweekly visits to the Peckhamplex cinema. The family's small world is populated by a host of characterful Ghanaians, including the entrepreneurial Uncle T, whose "mouth [is] full of gold like its own sunshine", and the shopkeeper/cafe owner Auntie Yaa, whose stock of yam, plantain and Supermalt brings a little bit of back-home to Peckham. Yaa's also a quick-thinking peacekeeper. When youths chase after a local boy who runs into her shop, Yaa distracts the would-be assailants with homilies and questions about their parents. Small Worlds is determinedly not another rehearsal of the kind of voyeuristic tabloid interest in Black people's lives marked by violence and social deprivation; rather, it's a love story. At least it sets out that way. Some novels announce their intention from the first page. Here the burgeoning romance between Stephen and his fellow sixth former, Del, moves glacially from a beginning that risks appearing banal to an affecting meditation on the migrant experience. Though a perceptive narrator, Stephen is frustrated by his own inarticulacy. Del is sassy and beautiful. "I want to say this to her," he admits, "but outside of song and film, I've never heard this spoken." It might help Stephen if he was more familiar with his parents' mother tongue, but he informs us: "Mum always says my Ga has come home in a suitcase, like I'm a visitor in my own language." The novel would also benefit from a more generous inclusion of the rich hybrid of London/Ghanaian vernacular. One of the challenges Nelson wrestles with is how to make soap opera-ish everyday dialogue support the narrator's intimation of the characters' sophisticated interior lives. Their language may falter, but music and the capacity to dance liberate both Stephen's peers and his parents' generation from the daily oppression of Peckham life. In a two-step, swaying in the pews at church, Eric, Joy and other elders can trade sorrow and shame; and youths achieve much the same at the local dancehall. The narrator returns to this motif repeatedly, but though Stephen is a jazz-loving trumpeter, his description of music's power of transcendence is often overwrought - perhaps on purpose, to reflect Stephen's earnest youth: "I play until I am spent, until the lines dividing who I am and the sound I'm making blur and thin." To deepen the portrayal of his characters, Nelson relies mostly on reportage. Del has been shaped by being an orphan. "Her life is informed by loss but because she's lost, she loves freely, openly, with all she can." We're told that music is key to understanding Del's character, but the author offers little to fire our imagination that how she plays the double bass, for example, might be a manifestation of her grief. The novel works best when we're given hints - to suggest, for instance, that the dark side of an otherwise happy family, the tension between father and son, has arisen from a glimpsed moment of intimacy between Eric and another woman which may have been misinterpreted by Stephen. Other pivotal scenes, such as Stephen's trip to Elmina Castle in Ghana, from where enslaved Africans were shipped to the Americas, are bolted on, and read like a shortcut towards unearned gravitas. In a novel told in three sections, not only is there a mystifying shift in register from a gentle love story in part one to the opening of part two, with the killing of Mark Duggan and the riots of 2011, but the narrator's reflections on the ensuing conflagrations, though sincere - "We're watching a group of people who are tired of being erased" - are unconvincing. Intergenerational trauma is characterised by the estrangement of fathers and sons, stemming from paternal disappointment and rejection, following the sacrifices that come with migration. Towards the conclusion it becomes a governing theme, and although it works well as a coda it would have been more impactful had it been signposted earlier. There's a confident thrum of poetic prose in much of the writing, especially in the depiction of the reconciliatory tenderness between Stephen and his father. Overall, though, Small Worlds feels hurried. It's only two years on from the much admired debut of this talented writer; Nelson would have been better served had the fruit of his writing not been plucked and forced to ripen before it's ready.
Booklist Review
Award-winning Azumah Nelson's eagerly awaited sophomore novel, following Open Water (2021), is a provocative coming-of-age story told in his signature lyrical prose. Stephen's life revolves around music. As the son of Ghanaian immigrants in London, it's the rhythmic gospel music at church that ignites his soul and connects him to his parents. Music also defines his relationship with his best friend, Del, and it's music that holds Stephen's small world together. As Stephen faces choices about college and leaving home, the music is stripped away, and his world begins to fall apart. Away from the community of people who look like him and share his experiences, Stephen is forced to take a closer look at what defines him and discovers, painfully, that it clashes with his parent's expectations. Azumah Nelson captures the innocence of youth set against the pressure of a gentrifying neighborhood, complex family relationships, and the bridging of two worlds and cultures, Great Britain and Ghana. The result is a beautifully rich novel celebrating love and art and conducting an in-depth exploration of the joys and pains of Black youth.
Library Journal Review
Nelson's follow-up to his Costa Award--winning and National Book Foundation "5 Under 35" debut novel Open Water is a loving portrait of a British Ghanaian community in London, told through the eyes of Stephen, a young aspiring jazz musician. During the last few weeks of high school and the following summer, his relationship with his longtime friend and bandmate Del blossoms into romance, but their attendance at different colleges forces a rift. Disillusioned, Stephen drops out and returns home, exacerbating a conflict with his father, who shows disdain at Stephen's apparent lack of direction and dreams of a music career. Only a family tragedy leads them slowly toward reconciliation. Throughout the novel, its title refers variously to the Ghanaian immigrant community centered on cultural touchstones, including food, music, and faith; families biological or chosen; and romantic relationships between two people. VERDICT The musicality of Nelson's language underscores this vibrant and deeply moving tale of love, family, and coming of age. While stories of conflict between first- and second-generation immigrants are common, the cultural richness and specificity of Nelson's narrative rises above tropes and stereotypes.--Christine DeZelar-Tiedman
