...a novel of moods and vibes rather than thoughts and ideas ... The reliance on 'feeling' reflects a wider evasiveness in the book despite its rich, lyrical moments. Azumah Nelson’s descriptions — of music, food and sex in particular — are strong...But he’s less sure-footed when he goes internal. There’s a direct-from-Hallmark banality to some observations ... Often the phrasing is overwrought...or just bizarre. This is frustrating, because Small Worlds is a bighearted book, and Stephen is an amiable character. The most powerful emotions — anger at becoming estranged from his father, grief following a bereavement — are locked behind clotted prose, and there is no tonal difference between, say, a description of race riots and an account of learning to cook. But hold on, and hang in there. The third and last part of the book is the strongest, as Stephen renegotiates his relationship with his father. We get clarity, and a surprising narrative switch that somehow works.

Small Worlds is determinedly not another rehearsal of the kind of voyeuristic tabloid interest in Black people’s lives marked by violence and social deprivation; rather, it’s a love story. At least it sets out that way ... The novel works best when we’re given hints – to suggest, for instance, that the dark side of an otherwise happy family, the tension between father and son, has arisen from a glimpsed moment of intimacy between Eric and another woman which may have been misinterpreted by Stephen. Other pivotal scenes, such as Stephen’s trip to Elmina Castle in Ghana, from where enslaved Africans were shipped to the Americas, are bolted on, and read like a shortcut towards unearned gravitas ... There’s a confident thrum of poetic prose in much of the writing, especially in the depiction of the reconciliatory tenderness between Stephen and his father. Overall, though, Small Worlds feels hurried. It’s only two years on from the much admired debut of this talented writer; Nelson would have been better served had the fruit of his writing not been plucked and forced to ripen before it’s ready.

As they grow into their bodies and creative selves against a backdrop of urban (as in the sprawling, stinky, humming city) life and urban (as in black) music and culture, theirs is the ultimate modern romance, and we see it from the inside. Azumah Nelson’s characters are intelligent, and his poetic, elastic, bright prose has an uplifting energy, even when he’s writing about the pain of loneliness. There are hard chapters about London race riots, poverty, knife crime and grief. About contemporary Africa, global migration and loss of faith. Repeated words and phrases (including some from Open Water) form an insistent chorus. But beneath it all is a sense of wonder and delight at the gifts the world can bestow ... Turning pain into a blissful art form is nothing new for black creators, many of whom are namechecked in this culturally open novel. But Azumah Nelson is something new: an unashamedly clever, spiritual, angry, loving voice in fiction, just when we need it most. Small Worlds is a book for everyone. Sure, unless you are a London teenager or live with one, you’ll probably miss the resonance of some words and phrases — but no matter. No one could fail to feel the message, of always striving for emotional honesty and hope, that is at the heart of this uplifting symphony of a summer read.

The economic and emotional trials that beset any family, especially the distance between fathers and sons, are expertly handled but the music, and the language used to describe it, is where the author truly excels ... The power that music has over us has rarely been better expressed and when Stephen’s father is reunited with the flight case of records he was forced to leave behind in Ghana as a young man, it’s difficult not to well up. Small Worlds resonates and reverberates with the true language of our souls. Drop the needle on it.

Explor[es] not only the way that people can build spaces or shelters out of personal connections but also the way that spaces shape lives ... Feels thinner than Open Water at some points, most notably in the way it incorporates visual arts and music into its pages ... [This] focus on language’s limits helps avoid overconfidence—as though any of these feelings or experiences could be fully expressed—but it feels misplaced ... Small Worlds also has words, and it achieves a great deal with them. Nelson’s writing of summer is fantastic.

Stephen is delicate, very delicate, and at times Small Worlds feels like the most sensitive book ever written, because no matter how serious its themes – race riots, a parent’s depression – Azumah Nelson deals with it with profound tenderness ... Given that even the most rudimentary of Peckham sunsets is described here as if it were a sonata deserving of trumpets...it’s all emphatically overwritten – and riven, too, with tears, most of them Stephen’s...but the overall effect is mesmerizing, at times even overwhelming, and succeeds in making the reader similarly alert to the everyday beauty that exists within even the most hostile of environments ... Nelson stares into the abyss, and manages to find jewels.

What makes Azumah Nelson so seductive is the way he nails how it feels to be young, in love, in London in the summer, with possibility stretching out ahead. His territory is the after-hours funk clubs of Deptford and Peckham frequented by black people in search of music and kinship; the Caribbean cafés that stay open into the small hours; the journeys back home on the night bus. Thanks to his supple, lambent prose, it’s a landscape that dazzles ... So why is this supremely talented writer sometimes so dissatisfying to read? For someone who can write a sentence as lovely as 'that time between night and day, light dousing all in an otherworldly haze,' he has a surprising reliance on the generic ... There’s an awful lot to admire in Small Worlds but if you’ve read Open Water, it’s hard to avoid the suspicion it’s largely the same book all over again. Yet Azumah Nelson is so radical on the subject of masculinity, bestowing it with a rare and unapologetic tenderness, you almost forgive him. Let’s hope that with his third novel he feels able to leave behind the small worlds of his first two and really spread his wings.

...a delight: a book with a real feeling for sound and dance, and a sense of place from London to Ghana and back again ... The musicality of Small Worlds seeps into the whole book, with a feeling of inexorable movement. The sometimes disjointed chapters read almost like the sampling that continues to underpin many hip hop tracks...This music suffuses the London summers and Ghanaian heat that Nelson describes with loving warmth, the sense of freedom (and, at times, claustrophobia) that fills the city. His is a well-formed, often lyrical book that conjures up a city and a life with delicate and sympathetic beauty.

Azumah Nelson captures the innocence of youth set against the pressure of a gentrifying neighborhood, complex family relationships, and the bridging of two worlds and cultures, Great Britain and Ghana. The result is a beautifully rich novel celebrating love and art and conducting an in-depth exploration of the joys and pains of Black youth.

...astonishing ... Nelson’s assured writing captures the pulse of a dance party, the heat of a family’s bond, and the depth of spiritual fervor to conjure a story­ as infectious as a new favorite song.