You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty

“Feyi felt like a monster and a traitor, but it was fine, it had to happen.”

It has been five years since her husband has passed, and Feyi’s almost casual thought while having sex for the first time since Jonah’s death is important in that it shows just how deep and raw her grief still is. It also shows her rationalizing her actions, but in such a half-hearted way that it convinces no one, including herself, establishing the need for Feyi to heal to find love again.

“I think we’re just figuring out how to survive a world on fire…that it’s okay to be alive.”

Feyi knows the path out of her darkness from the very beginning: to be alive with someone else and to accept that she is alive without Jonah without guilt. Here, however, she knows the answer but is not able to manifest it, as she has not met a partner who understands and can survive with her.

“Everyone had a right to keep some hurts buried and private.”

Feyi’s best friend Joy gets a moment of depth in this quote. Because they are friends, Feyi respects her privacy while also being there for her, showing the theme of The Importance of Friendship. The quote also reflects on Feyi’s inability to communicate her grief to people like Nasir and highlights the theme of The Link Between Grieving People. Despite keeping their hurts buried, Feyi, Joy, and Milan bond over that shared hidden sorrow.

“[I]t felt so good to be on the receiving end of these men’s hungers. It felt like power.”

The word “like” is significant to this quote as it implies the hollowness of the situation. Feyi’s acknowledgment that she is not the one who hungers reveals she is not truly alive inside yet, despite seeing and responding to the life and hunger in others. While it is a good feeling, it is not truly power, and it is not truly fulfilling as satisfying her own hunger would be.

“It would be fine if Joy was there. Feyi could handle anything if Joy was there.”

Joy is the genre trope character of the best friend. Her job is to support the protagonist and highlight qualities in the main character that are admirable. Here Feyi voices the importance of Joy in her life and helps strengthen the theme of The Importance of Friendship.

“I work a lot in blood now. Since the accident. It’s so…it’s necessary to be alive.”

Feyi’s choice to work in blood is about being alive herself, showing herself coming out of the accident even though her husband did not. This quote has a double meaning in that blood is truly necessary to be alive, but Feyi is also talking about how necessary The Power of Art and Music is in her own life and how she is trying to recover the feeling of being alive after being buried in grief for so long.

“With fresh alarm, Feyi noticed a twinge of attraction unfurling in her stomach.

It was the last thing she expected. When she’d met both Milan and Nasir, she’d been drawn to them because the want had started in their eyes. It had beckoned her over like bait, calling her until she built a mirror, reflecting it back to them. This was foreign, the want bursting small but insistent in her belly, a warm pool.”

This moment is key for a few reasons, the first being that it is the love-at-first-sight moment that typifies romance novels. It is also a contrast to Important Quote #5 and the first part of the book where Feyi is reacting to others’ hunger for her to feel alive. Here she is experiencing that feeling again for the first time since her husband’s death. Suddenly she is the one who is hungry when she looks at Alim, an indication that she is healing and that he will be the one who helps her.

“Feyi held her breath as she looked around—it felt like a fairy tale, like they were passing through a gate between worlds.”

Throughout the novel Feyi and Joy refer to Alim’s mountain home as a bubble. It is a fairy tale world for Feyi, where she meets the man who is her ideal match, and her dreams about her art come true. It is a world that enables her to open up and be vulnerable. To confirm their love is real, however, she and Alim must leave the enchanted world and test their love in the reality of Feyi’s Brooklyn.

“‘You have a ruby onyinyechi amanze original?’ she asked, glancing over at him.

When Alim smiled at her, her chest fluttered in response. ‘I thought you might like that,’ he said. ‘You Nigerians always know each other’s work.’”

There are several functions to this interaction. First, it shows the cultural diversity within the Black Diaspora, highlighting the difference between Feyi’s Nigerian ancestry and Alim’s Caribbean roots. Second, by bringing real-life artists into the world of the novel, the lines between fiction and reality blur, resulting in a feeling of realism for the reader. Third, the fact that Alim’s favorite artists are ones whom Feyi already loves is a strong hint that they are each other’s true match. That Nasir declares a sentence later that he does not understand the piece is both a metaphor for his misunderstanding of Feyi and an indication that Feyi is with the wrong Blake.

“Honestly, babe? I think you’re also kinda scared about where you and Nasir might be heading. He’s been low-key perfect, and maybe it’s easier to think about blowing it all up than to keep going. There are lots of ways to run away, you know?”

Joy voices a popular trope in romance novels: the protagonist’s being afraid of love. This trope is commonly employed to create conflict between the lovers. Akwaeke Emezi, however, brings nuance to the trope. Feyi is indeed scared about where she and Nasir are heading, but she is not simply afraid of love. The problem is that Feyi needs a man who understands the depths of her grief, a detail that is not included in romances as often.

“Feyi noticed a silver ring hanging from a chain around his neck, falling out as he bent to put the bowls on the table. It caused a twinge in her chest—she’d worn her wedding ring like that for years after Jonah died.”

The wedding ring is a symbol of Alim’s grief and past life. Feyi picks up on it and uses the same symbol to create her installation for the museum. When Alim walks in and sees it, he instantly understands Feyi’s references and her pain. The theme and the bond of The Link Between Grieving People is strengthened for Feyi and Alim through this object.

“It had been safer with Milan, where she felt neither the urge to ask nor to answer questions, and even with Nasir, who held no caverns inside him.”

The second part of this sentence is like a death knell for Feyi’s relationship with Nasir. At this point, it is a casual acknowledgment of his inability to understand Feyi, but as The Link Between Grieving People becomes a bigger factor in Feyi and Alim’s relationship, Nasir’s lack of “caverns” becomes a block to being the man Feyi needs.

“This desire that pooled like a traitorous flame, that wasn’t in response to someone else, that was coming from her and just her. She belonged to it and it belonged to her, and that’s as far as it need go. […] She was alive, like her therapist had taught her, and it was okay to live.”

When Feyi thinks Alim does not feel the same way about her, she has the strength of character to step back and use the feeling for self-empowerment. By acknowledging that the feeling in itself is progress, she uses her disappointment to grow from the situation, helping fulfill a trope in the romance genre of self-acceptance and self-love before being able to fully experience love with another.

“‘I did not mean to trade war stories. Only to say, I know the particular pain of losing the one you love before your very eyes. I am sorry,’ he said, ‘for the hurt that lives in your heart.’”

Here Alim shows he is the perfect person for Feyi. Not only does he spark hunger in her, but he also understands exactly what she is feeling. He has the caverns his son lacks and can speak directly to her grief.

“[I]t was something she wanted to hear—what it was like to fall in love again after your heart had been shattered. She could feel Jonah’s presence on the mountain peak, gentle and curious.”

Throughout the book, her lost husband’s voice manifests when Feyi is having a moment of realization or awakening to a truth that she needs to learn. Here he appears at the crucial moment where she may be falling in love again. That he appears as gentle and curious not only mimics the way Alim has been described, indicating he is the man for Feyi but also shows that there are no negative feelings of guilt associated with this new love, almost as if he is giving Feyi his blessing.

“And that’s something I’ve learned in the years since, that there are so many different types of love, so many ways someone can stay committed to you, stay in our life even if y’all aren’t together, you know? And none of these ways are more important than the other.”

Feyi is speaking about her love for Joy in this scene, expressing the theme of The Importance of Friendship. She admits that for a while she thought Joy was going to be her new love, but she has since found out that friendship, in novels such as this, can be just as vital to the protagonist as sexual attraction.

“No good could come of following a song like that when she knew who was waiting at the other end, but because Feyi was herself, and alive, she kept going.”

One of the major themes of the novel is The Power of Art and Music, and here the protagonist responds to and acknowledges this force. The singer is a Spanish artist named Buika. The music sets the tone of passion for the scene, in which Feyi encounters Alim alone in his kitchen. The small syntactical aside for the reader about Feyi being alive creates suspense with its hint that passionate, living behavior is about to happen.

“You always fall for the impossible, Jonah used to tell her. It had not mattered then because he believed in her so fiercely, everything had turned out to be possible anyway.”

This mention of Jonah’s attitude toward life becomes important at the end of the novel when both Alim and Feyi embrace this attitude about their seemingly impossible relationship. That Alim declares and embraces the same attitude toward life further underlines their perfect match. Feyi herself says later that even if they do not know how it’s going to work, they believe in their relationship, again making sure the reader knows there is consistency in their approach to life.

“Tonight, we are celebrating Feyi and the art she makes, work that reminds me that grief can also be the softness when the spikes are removed, something that gives your palate joy, something that can fill your belly. And for that, Feyi, I thank you.”

Here Alim expresses the depth of his feelings about grief, using his art, cooking, to explain what he feels. The Power of Art and Music is an important theme in this novel, and Emezi makes clear that cooking qualifies as an art form when done at this level. Alim, like Feyi, is an artist using his art to heal. His comments also underscore The Link Between Grieving People as the core of his relationship with Feyi.

“With you. Like even if I still felt alone, at least I felt like I was alone next to your alone, like our alone could walk together.”

Here, Feyi articulates the depth of her relationship with Alim and voices what she needs. While Nasir cannot understand her loneliness, Alim’s loneliness is a mutual feeling, and The Link Between Grieving People is something on which they can build their relationship.

“‘You’re my friend,’ he said, as if it were obvious, and as Feyi looked into his eyes she was horrified to find that not only did she believe him, but it also felt so much more true than the number of times Nasir had said it to her, because while he was trying to be friends with the hot girl he’d met at the bar, Alim had slid all the way into her chest and found someone she’d been storing for years, someone she thought she’d never see again after the road with all that glass.”

This is the final piece that makes Alim the perfect match for Feyi. While her other love interests look at her as prey, Alim is the first who understands that friendship is just as powerful as sexual love. His affection is genuine, deep, and understanding in a way that does not intend to devour, but instead support. Alim has combined the two types of love, platonic and romantic, and become the perfect partner for Feyi.

“I may have said some things, but hey, none of them were lies. You all into excavating yourself for these people’s money, don’t you want them to know the truth about who you are?”

The cavern metaphor comes back in this sentence. Nasir has no caverns to excavate, and he throws it in Feyi’s face that this is what she does with her art. It is meant to be an insult, but it merely highlights how much Nasir does not understand Feyi. The fact that he does not see that her art is healing to her, or appreciate The Power of Art and Music, also reflects the shallowness of his human experience. Just after this, Feyi thinks she is glad she saw this side of Nasir before things got too far, as she has come to realize how much he is not the one for her.

“I didn’t wanna talk about my shit, and you didn’t wanna talk about yours, but I dunno. I think we recognized something in each other anyway, you know?”

This unexpected conversation between Milan and Feyi functions to emphasize The Link Between Grieving People. Despite not talking directly about their grief, Milan and Feyi intuited each other’s pain and felt connected through it. There is a link between them that they feel rather than discover, and when Milan finds out Feyi has met someone who understands her, he sees the truth of the situation and encourages her to go for it.