Hardcover, 248 pages
English language
Published Jan. 6, 2020 by Penguin Random House.
What does it mean for a family to lose a child they never really knew?
One afternoon, in a town in southeastern Nigeria, a mother opens her front door to discover her son’s body, wrapped in colorful fabric, at her feet. What follows is the tumultuous, heart-wrenching story of one family’s struggle to understand a child whose spirit is both gentle and mysterious. Raised by a distant father and an understanding but overprotective mother, Vivek suffers disorienting blackouts, moments of disconnection between self and surroundings. As adolescence gives way to adulthood, Vivek finds solace in friendships with the warm, boisterous daughters of the Nigerwives, foreign-born women married to Nigerian men. But Vivek’s closest bond is with Osita, the worldly, high-spirited cousin whose teasing confidence masks a guarded private life. As their relationship deepens—and Osita struggles to understand Vivek’s escalating crisis—the mystery gives way to a heart-stopping act of violence in …
What does it mean for a family to lose a child they never really knew?
One afternoon, in a town in southeastern Nigeria, a mother opens her front door to discover her son’s body, wrapped in colorful fabric, at her feet. What follows is the tumultuous, heart-wrenching story of one family’s struggle to understand a child whose spirit is both gentle and mysterious. Raised by a distant father and an understanding but overprotective mother, Vivek suffers disorienting blackouts, moments of disconnection between self and surroundings. As adolescence gives way to adulthood, Vivek finds solace in friendships with the warm, boisterous daughters of the Nigerwives, foreign-born women married to Nigerian men. But Vivek’s closest bond is with Osita, the worldly, high-spirited cousin whose teasing confidence masks a guarded private life. As their relationship deepens—and Osita struggles to understand Vivek’s escalating crisis—the mystery gives way to a heart-stopping act of violence in a moment of exhilarating freedom.
Propulsively readable, teeming with unforgettable characters, The Death of Vivek Oji is a novel of family and friendship that challenges expectations—a dramatic story of loss and transcendence that will move every reader.
Beautiful, I cried a lot
A few weird scenes feeling a bit off
A gorgeous, rich tale of love and a complicated life ended violently too soon. It was heart-wrenching and beautiful and I wished I could hold Vivek close.
https://www.npr.org/2020/08/04/898733187/love-triumphs-over-death-in-the-death-of-vivek-oji
I loved Freshwater, so I thought I was going to love this. Not so much!
The writing felt more standard, less expressive than Freshwater. The plot also felt more standard, like a family drama or mystery. Somewhere past halfway, I guessed that Vivek was dressing as a woman and that Osita had brought her back undressed to hide that. So that reveal was anti-climatic for me. It also honestly felt a bit gross for it to be withheld and used as a shock?? I didn’t feel good about that, but I don’t identify as genderqueer, so I can’t really say if that’s offensive. Plus the author is gender nonconforming, so what do I know. What I will say is that it didn’t work as a “reveal” to me. I’d rather it have shown up in the book earlier as we learned about Vivek/Nnmedi.
Overall, I still enjoyed the story and …
I loved Freshwater, so I thought I was going to love this. Not so much!
The writing felt more standard, less expressive than Freshwater. The plot also felt more standard, like a family drama or mystery. Somewhere past halfway, I guessed that Vivek was dressing as a woman and that Osita had brought her back undressed to hide that. So that reveal was anti-climatic for me. It also honestly felt a bit gross for it to be withheld and used as a shock?? I didn’t feel good about that, but I don’t identify as genderqueer, so I can’t really say if that’s offensive. Plus the author is gender nonconforming, so what do I know. What I will say is that it didn’t work as a “reveal” to me. I’d rather it have shown up in the book earlier as we learned about Vivek/Nnmedi.
Overall, I still enjoyed the story and will read more by Emezi.
Favorite quotes:
He was the one leaving me alone with my mother, who felt like a hammer instead of a person.
I could feel the shame like a shadow in my chest, but it was faint, insignificant. I didn’t care. I didn’t care. I would do it again, all of it, for him, always for him.
But if that pleasure was supposed to stop me from being a man, then fine. They could have it. I’d take the blinding light of his touch, the blessed peace of having him so close, and I would stop being a man. I was never one to begin with, anyway.
“We can’t keep insisting he was who we thought he was, when he wanted to be someone else and he died being that person, Chika.”
So close to four stars. Amazing portrayals of queer teens struggling to find themselves in a place where being anything even slightly different than what others expect you to be is dangerous. That feeling of impending violence and threat of death hangs over them and their families as they all struggle with the death of someone they realize they never fully knew. The only reason I'm rating it three stars is that, despite a few flourishes of language and symbolic meaning, I don't see myself wanting to read this again. I am glad I've read it though. Ch 16 alone almost added a star to the rating.
I love Akwaeke Emezi, and this book is a fine example of why. The dualities and boundary-straddling on so many different levels of this novel are fascinating to think about. I want to expand on that, but there's kind of no good way to do that without spoiling the ending.
The narrative structure of the book is interesting and unique, flipping between a handful of first-person chapters and a third person story that gives a panoptic view of the characters at the heart of the novel. My only complaint about that is it feels like we don't get a chance to know everything we want to know about everyone involved, but it's a short book, so it's understandable.
I did like the story and structure of Freshwater a bit better, but the exploration of assumptions and things that aren't quite what they seem in Vivek Oji were gorgeously crafted and …
I love Akwaeke Emezi, and this book is a fine example of why. The dualities and boundary-straddling on so many different levels of this novel are fascinating to think about. I want to expand on that, but there's kind of no good way to do that without spoiling the ending.
The narrative structure of the book is interesting and unique, flipping between a handful of first-person chapters and a third person story that gives a panoptic view of the characters at the heart of the novel. My only complaint about that is it feels like we don't get a chance to know everything we want to know about everyone involved, but it's a short book, so it's understandable.
I did like the story and structure of Freshwater a bit better, but the exploration of assumptions and things that aren't quite what they seem in Vivek Oji were gorgeously crafted and I sailed right through reading it.
