Review: You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty

You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. 

They would both live with their choices and be the ones accountable for them. 

You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty was a story of grief and consequences of love. In the flavor of women's and literary fiction, readers are brought into Feyi's world as she is deciding to have sex for the first time in five years with a man she makes eye contact with at a bar. From there, introspection and memories from Feyi are weaved into her present thoughts and actions and we learn that Feyi lost her highschool sweetheart husband to a car accident, why she hasn't slept with anyone in five years. It's the start of her taking her first steps out of grief. 

Feyi's an artist, one who likes to work with blood (pig's) as her medium in art and your enjoyment of this story is probably going to depend on if first, you go to art shows, and secondly, if you're the type to hold a glass of wine and discuss pieces using words like “liminal” and “oeuvre”; I fall somewhere between glass wine holding and “wtf”. Feyi was a moving character, her pain is felt and the realness of the friendship she has with her emotionally self-destructive friend Joy (Joy likes to get into relationships with women in marriages) added sincere layers to the story. However, as Joy states at one point, Feyi is messy in her journey. 

The man Feyi made eye contact with the bar, ends up becoming a f-buddy and legitimate friend. Neither wants to deepen the relationship as they don't want to share their emotional baggage. In comes Nasir, one of the f-buddy's friends and he is taken with Feyi. This could have been the mess but, enjoyably, everyone handles it maturely and while Feyi likes Nasir and feels like there could be something there, she keeps telling him she wants to take it slow. Nasir lets her dictate everything and they have a friendship that involves kissing and touching. I felt like the danger on the horizon was Feyi not being able to decide if she wanted something deeper with Nasir, when he so clearly was feeling a soulmate vibe, I thought either Feyi would be pressured to fake it or she would lead him on indefinitely. Oh no, my friends, the danger on the horizon was Daddy. 

Nasir invites Feyi to his home island, where they will stay at his father's house and through his father's connections, Feyi has been invited to show some of her artwork at a show coming up on the island. It's all pooh-poohing from Feyi that she's just going as Nasir's friend but the track they're on feels very romantic love, not friendship. At thirty percent Feyi meets Nasir's famous chef father Alim and she instantly feels sexual attraction/awaking towards him. 

The rest of the story is Feyi getting horny over Alim and the circumstances of events that lead to a major blow-up around the 75% mark. Feyi and Alim's relationship and the giving in is where my question of art shows and your level of depth of enjoyment is going to come into play. Are you a rube or are you above such basic thinking regarding, somewhat, societal structured relationship rules? It's not quite as cut and dry as that but even with Feyi and Alim's shared pain of losing a significant other to a sudden tragic death and Alim's past of once giving up a love for his children, I couldn't help feeling there was simple selfishness to their actions, each is very aware how hurt Nasir is going to be. I thought the author did a wonderful job getting me to even question the morality of them coming together. 

I'm not sure what Alim saw in Feyi beyond a gorgeous young woman that probably made him feel younger with her passion and art. Since the story is told through her eyes, I saw more reasons for why Alim attracted Feyi, but not all necessarily great reasons. He was a rich accomplished man, that was more stable and Feyi still finding her sea legs coming out of grief, this would naturally draw her. The big thing for me, though, was that Feyi starts to lie to Joy and if she truly didn't think she was doing anything wrong, she wouldn't have felt the need to lie to her bestfriend who she, previously, told everything. I also thought when Nasir acted out on his pain, in a way that was definitely not acceptable, instead of acknowledging his emotional pain, Feyi throws the death of her husband in his face as a defensive shield to any negativity towards her actions with his father. 

This story will definitely get book clubs talking, Feyi herself, her grief, and the relationships she has, the handful of secondary characters that felt incredibly full and could support their own stories, and of course the discussion of what ethics or morality, if any, should be followed with acting on one's own feelings in pursuit of romantic love. Following it's tone of not cut or dry, the story leaves readers with a still stinging and hopeful happy for now.

View all my reviews