Book Review: “The Death of Vivek Oji,” by Akwaeke Emezi

Vivek’s life unfurls in a series of flashbacks — boys on bikes, SAT prep classes, military school — punctuated by occasional interjections from beyond the grave. This storytelling tool might feel like a cudgel in the hands of a less skillful writer but Emezi employs it like a dainty paintbrush, gently and sparingly. Vivek tells us, “I’m not what anyone thinks I am. I never was. I didn’t have the mouth to put it into words, to say what was wrong, to change the things I felt I needed to change. And every day it was difficult, walking around and knowing that people saw me one way, knowing that they were wrong, so completely wrong, that the real me was invisible to them. It didn’t even exist to them.”

Redemption comes from other narrators — Vivek’s cousin Osita, and childhood friends who are daughters of fellow expatriates like Kavita. (Emezi sets up layers of outsiders, then steps back to let them gravitate toward one another.) These characters can’t save Vivek from scorn but they see him, embrace him and lift him up in the way of friends who transcend family. Their dance is what makes “The Death of Vivek Oji” feel like a beginning instead of an ending.

In one of Vivek’s sections, he says, “Alone is a feeling you can get used to, and it’s hard to believe in a better alternative.” With this dazzling, devastating story of coming-of-age and coming out, Emezi gives us hope for a better alternative and language to make it happen.

Discussion Questions

• What do you think is the significance of Vivek’s scar? Of his blackouts?

• Emezi peppers the book with language that may be unfamiliar to American readers. How did it add to your experience of entering the Ojis’ world, or did the unfamiliar terms give you wahala? (Translation: trouble.)

Suggested Reading

“The Lovely Bones,” by Alice Sebold. Our critic wrote, “At first it sounds like a high-concept movie, one of those supernatural heart-tuggers like ‘Ghost’ or ‘The Sixth Sense’: the story of a teenage girl’s rape and murder, and the fallout those events have on her family, as narrated from heaven by the dead girl herself.” Like Emezi, Sebold pulls off this unusual perspective with grace.

“This Is How It Always Is,” by Laurie Frankel. Frankel’s novel is the story of a large family whose youngest member is trans. Out of an abundance of good intentions, having caught what our reviewer called “a whiff of homophobia” in their town, the Walsh-Adams clan relocates to Seattle, where they expect a more accepting environment for Claude (formerly Poppy). Their decision to hide the story of Claude’s birth starts a ripple effect that becomes a tsunami reminiscent of the one that hits the reader in “The Death of Vivek Oji.”