I had read only one Akwaeke Emezi book before You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty, which was The Death of Vivek Oji. What struck me while reading this book, however, was how many of the things that made The Death of Vivek Oji uncomfortable for me also appear, in one form or another, here. Emezi has a particular interest in exploring ideas such as morality, sexuality, love and acceptable behaviours in ways many Nigerians, and perhaps in extension Africans, would frown against.
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With disturbing directness, both The Death of Vivek Oji and You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty explores homosexuality (although the latter far subtly), a subject that many Nigerians consider sinful, disgusting, and in extreme cases, are of the opinion that homosexuals should be put to death simply because of their sexual preferences. The latter part is one reason I think Emezi’s books are doing something important; they are establishing the understanding that homosexuals are people too, although with different, maybe even strange sexual preferences, but with the same dreams, pain, joy, and everything that makes a human and therefore, worthy of life. When homosexuality becomes a subject explored in a society’s stories, and queer characters are written as people with desires, families, flaws, ambition, grief etc, it becomes difficult for that society to condemn such people to death because the society disagrees with some of their choices. Whatever one’s personal opinion or religious position on homosexuality may be, the right of the people involved to life should always be protected.
That said, Emezi’s willingness to challenge conventional morality is one reason which made The Death of Vivek Oji a difficult read for me. Although similar moral transgression is seen in You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty, it is far more forgivable when put in comparison. The exploration, with troubling casualness, of the incestuous relationship between Vivek and Osita is an aspect of The Death of Vivek Oji I can never make peace with. Although the romantic relationship between the main characters of both books is written as unintended, messy and complicated, I find it difficult to accept whatever it is Vivek and Osita had going on. But at the same time, I do understand that stories are written to challenge societal norms, not to make every reader happy. Feyi and Alim’s love is what readers might find themselves rooting for at some point, after getting over the initial internal conflict one might have, because what is more beautiful than two people bruised by loss and grief finding solace in each other’s arms.
Now to one very important feature of a romance book: the description of intimacy. Drawing on my accumulated knowledge gained from years of obsessing over Harlequin’s books as a teenager, I have developed a fairly good sense of what makes a good romance book, and one of it is the description of intimacy between the main characters. It is not enough for an author to tell us two characters have extraordinary intimacy, but to describe to us, through the generous use of imagery, what a sexual encounter between two characters in love is like. And on that front, Akwaeke Emezi delivered beyond expectation in You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty. The opening scene immediately introduces readers to characters with a frantic, almost animalistic urgency to get into each other’s pants. This intimacy is presented as something based entirely on desire. Then, rather deliberately, the novel starves us of the same kind of sexual intimacy until the lovemaking scene on the mountain. While the opening encounter happens quickly in a party bathroom, the mountain scene is written as deliberate and set in a beautiful setting. With this contrast in the two sex scenes, Emezi shows us the difference between love and lust.
Beyond love, romance and sex, You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty is deeply interested in death and grief. Emezi writes grief with the same vividness with which they write sexual intimacy. With the use of imagery, one does not merely visualise what the characters have lost; readers can also feel what the characters feel. Grief in this book, is written as something that occupies the body, memory and everyday life rather than something that conveniently disappears because the plot has moved on.
What I found particularly compelling is that the novel does not treat grief as a single, universal experience. Through different kinds of losses and different relationships between the bereaved and the dead, Emezi shows how devastating absence can be. Losing a romantic partner is not the only kind of loss capable of shattering a person. The death of one’s parents, child, or even the death of someone whose place in your life is difficult to explain can leave a wound.
Yet the novel's argument about grief is ultimately not that the dead must be forgotten so that the living can move on. It is that remembering someone and continuing to live are not mutually exclusive. And that there is a difference between living and actually being alive.
Feyi's journey, in particular, seems to ask whether choosing happiness after devastating loss is a betrayal of the person who died. Can you fall in love again without loving the person you lost any less? Can pleasure exist alongside grief? Can you want something new when a part of you is still mourning something old? The novel's answer appears to be yes.
Feyi's eventual willingness to embrace love again does not erase her grief. Instead, the novel suggests that grief and joy can occupy the same life. You can miss someone and still laugh. You can carry an old wound and still allow someone new to touch you. You can remember the dead without making your own life a monument to their absence.
Another lovely thing about the book is its enormous and diverse cast of characters. The novel moves across cultures, backgrounds and worldviews, taking us from Nigeria and Ghana to America, the Caribbean and Asia. Through its characters, we encounter different foods, music, cultures, ideas about family and, perhaps most importantly, different ideas about what a living is supposed to look like. This range of diversity is something I have not encountered in quite the same way in another book.
If there is one thing I took away from You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty, it is that it is important to continue to live, wholly, even in the face of adversities. You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty is a romance, yes. But beneath all that is a story about the complicated business of remaining alive after life has given you every reason to stop living fully.
Although several parts of the book made me feel uncomfortable, I liked it, and I am looking forward to reading more of Akwaeke Emezi's work.
You daeserve a million flowers for reading to the end. Thank you!!!
Byeeeeee
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