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| Photo by Michael Fenton on Unsplash |
It’s been a couple of weeks, but I started my reading journey for the year with two books with similar themes, but whose messaging about love and relationships couldn’t be further apart. In Caleb Azumah Nelson’s Open Water, love throws you out into the deep end and leaves you vulnerable to drowning. On the other hand, in Damilare Kuku’s riotous Nearly All the Men in Lagos are Mad (and you just know the women would have to be madder), love is a battleground, and only the craziest can survive it.
This post was originally meant to be an
analysis of Open Water’s themes, but then I finished Nearly All the
Men in Lagos are Mad, and I just knew I had to talk about them both
together. While, personally speaking, both books left me wanting in a lot of
ways, it’s really interesting to see the different ways in which they examine love and relationship
dynamics.
Open Water is
a poetic portrayal of a tale as old as time: boy meets girl, and they fall in
love; unfortunately, “happy ever after” might not be as achievable as both
parties might like. The unnamed protagonist experiences love as an awakening of
sorts, but one he ultimately shies away from. Love opens him up to scrutiny and
brings him into a light that he’s not ready to face. It’s why the author likens
love to a gaze: to be loved is to be seen for who you truly are. You enter into
a relationship with the unspoken expectation of sharing parts of yourself,
parts you’d probably prefer remained hidden. The other person gets to see all
the sides of you, both the pretty and the ugly, in the same way you get to see
theirs.
I particularly enjoyed the protagonist’s
earnestness and his constant yearning. The majority of novels I’ve read that
depict love and romance from a male character’s perspective often examine those
feelings through a humorous lens. Seeing Open Water’s protagonist so in
tune with and so unashamed of his feelings is refreshing. Unfortunately, his feelings for her aren't enough. When all the trauma comes flooding back, he does what he does
best: he retreats, even from the woman he loves so much. It was a conclusion
that didn’t make a lot of sense to me at the time, and in some ways it still
doesn’t. But I suppose that sometimes, shutting down can be the only way to
keep the hurt at bay.
“To be him is to apologize and often that apology comes in the form of suppression, and that suppression is also indiscriminate.”
— Caleb Azumah Nelson, Open Water
There’s none of this softness in Nearly
All the Men in Lagos are Mad. In this collection’s depiction of Lagos,
everyone’s hiding something of themselves from the people they supposedly love,
hiding the hurt and trauma behind that Nigerian exoskeleton we term “madness”. To
be vulnerable is to put yourself at risk, and to pine is to have all those
feelings thrown back in your face. As a result, there’s hardly any self-reflection
that the characters in this collection so desperately need. They are too busy
fighting external wars to deal with their internal demons.
At this point, the tales of romantic woe
that perpetually proceed from Nigeria’s biggest and most infamous city are
practically cliché, but there’s a lot of truth in these stories, especially in
regards to how much dysfunction exists in our relationships simply
because we refuse to be honest with ourselves and with each other. Whether it’s
the titular men who constantly sacrifice their relationships on the altar of
ego and sexual self-satisfaction, or the women who stay in these relationships
for their own self-preservation, everyone is broken and there are no winners,
merely survivors.
Yes, there’s clearly something in the water
in Lagos that these men are drinking, and the women have certainly had to
develop thick skin to dish out in the same measure that they’ve been dealt, but
then you have to wonder: is there really anything worth fighting for? Truly, this
book deserves its own post to dig into its themes and characters. I did really enjoy
the colloquial writing style in this one; it makes for a quick, refreshing
read.
“Anyone who could keep a white shirt clean at the end of the day in Lagos deserved a standing ovation. But I should have known that any man who could keep a clean white shirt at the end of a Lagos work day would be dangerous.”
— Damilare Kuku, Nearly All the Men in Lagos are Mad
The key takeaways these two books present
for me about love is the necessity of vulnerability and honesty in
relationships. It can be difficult and scary, but there’s great value in
presenting our truths to each other, with everything laid bare. Of course, there are some
truths too weighty to divulge, and openness doesn’t guarantee a happy ever
after. At the very least, we’ll be better equipped to make strategic decisions and
pick our battles. Love can be like the open water, vast and unknowable, but we
don’t have to drown. And love can be a battleground, full of casualties, but
perhaps in some ways, we can all win.
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