2023-05-02 09:31:00
All kinds of love
Akwaeke Emezi im Jahr 2019
Quelle: Theo Wargo/WireImage/Getty Images
The artist Feyi finds it difficult to love again after the loss of her husband. When she does fall in love, it is with the father of her boyfriend and admirer. What happens then is described by the author in such a colourful, vulgar and kitschy way that you have to look again and again.
Dhe word “romance” is mentally not far removed from the dime novel. Scheme: woman falls for man and they have to overcome obstacles to find each other. The word “love story”, on the other hand, is freer. This is also about people who love each other, but there are fewer conventions attached to it. The end seems open. The writer Akwaeke Emezi, born in Nigeria in 1987, has published seven books in the past four years, almost all of them “New York Times” bestsellers, her current work “You are so beautiful, even death fades” alternates in an interesting way between the conventional and the unexpected dimensions of love.
The focus is on 29-year-old Feyi Adekola. A Brooklyn artist who lost her husband in a car accident five years ago. Jonah was, as they say, the love of her life. Since his death, Feyi has shrouded himself in grief and now, as the novel begins, decides to live again. And so the story opens with a sex scene in a club toilet. That the first sex after grief and five years of abstinence is so impersonal and dangerous could be dismissed as unrealistic, or, thanks to Emezi’s language, as just right. Because therein lies one of the strengths of the author: creating beauty in unexpected places. But Feyi is still struggling with the thought of a new relationship or even love. Then she meets Nasir at a party, who falls in love with her and invites her to a Caribbean island. There it is Nasir’s father, Alim, who arouses Feyi’s interest.
“You are so beautiful, even death turns pale” tells not only a love story. It is above all a story about love itself. Their characteristics and how they guide life. How she turns into something dark and comforting at the same time after losing someone. How love for children can outweigh and prevent love for a partner. How much security love for your best friend can give and that it doesn’t even have to be purely platonic to work. The active forces of love are open here on all sides. Literally and figuratively, because almost every character is bisexual.
A mixture of “Girls” and “Bridgerton”
Emezi’s language changes with every form of love. From rough to vulgar dialogues between best friends to sensual descriptions of nature experiences to kitsch, for example when Alim says to Feyi: “You are like light. To live on I must turn my face to you.” Or when “his aura crosses hers” and the desire is “deep as the night” and “greedy as the ocean”. Here one reads then probably rather a dime novel. Excited to see what happens next and when the two, who are actually not allowed to love each other, finally sleep together.
Due to its dynamic, Emezi’s dialogue-heavy novel is sometimes reminiscent of a television series, a mixture of “Girls” and “Bridgerton”, for example when the two friends Feyi and Joy talk very directly and almost exclusively about sex. As soon as Feyi enters the estate of Nasir’s father – a rich star chef – it is as if she is entering a courtly room. She enters a world of luxury, isolated on a mountain estate. A celebration is held in her honor, for which she puts her hair dyed gold up and wears rubies on her ears. It’s a modern day fairy tale well worth reading.
Akwaeke Emezi: You are so beautiful, even death turns pale. Hanser, 352 pages, 25 euros.
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