A young widow finds a balance between her grief and her awakening.
A young widow finds a balance between her grief and her awakening.
Off the bat, Akwaeke Emezi (they/them) can write an alluring sex scene—their descriptors are fleshy yet light on vulgar euphemisms. You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty is full of paradisical imagery, poetic language, and sensuality. It’s a sensory journey into a grieving widow’s emotions, her guilt-ridden desires, and the grief she lives with.
Seemingly straightforward, the novel revolves around Feyi, an artist who lands a unique opportunity to showcase her work in a gallery on a tropical island. Although she’s there at the invitation of her love interest, Nasir, she finds herself drawn to his celebrity chef father, Alim, who unravels her hunger for a deeper bond. When Feyi discovers her renewed appetite for sex and passion, a spark develops between them—suddenly, the story is anything but simple.
Aside from the potential scandal of the unlikely couple’s pairing on the small island, there’s much more to this narrative. Alim and Feyi’s deep attraction to one another notwithstanding, they share a connection that intrigues and terrifies Feyi. Having both experienced unimaginable loss when their spouses passed away, they also endured heartache from falling in love with same-sex partners. In each other, they find understanding and a sense of belonging—a feeling Feyi realizes early on she’d never have with Nasir.
Emezi portrays Nasir as the anti-Alim. While Alim is intuitive and embraces his femininity, Nasir loathes his father’s eccentricities, warns Feyi about Alim’s effeminacy, and then denies his bisexuality. Nasir’s homophobic behavior appears to be rooted in his need to assert authority, posing a concerning situation for Feyi since she’s staying in Alim’s expansive mountain home while on the island.
This novel captures the essence of love, loss, renewal, sexuality, and rediscovery.
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Akwaeke Emezi (they/them) is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Death of Vivek Oji, which was a finalist for the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the PEN/Jean Stein Award; Pet, a finalist for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, a Walter Honor Book, and a Stonewall Honor Book; Freshwater, which was named a New York Times Notable Book and shortlisted for the PEN/Hemingway Award, the New Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, the Lambda Literary Award, and the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize; Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir, which won the 2022 ALA Stonewall Prize for Best Nonfiction Book; and most recently, Content Warning: Everything, their debut poetry collection, and Bitter, their second young adult novel. Selected as a 5 Under 35 honoree by the National Book Foundation and featured on a Time cover as a Next Generation Leader, they are based in liminal spaces.
