SMALL WORLDS, by Caleb Azumah NelsonCaleb Azumah Nelson’s debut novel, “Open Water” (2021), was rightly praised for its poetic take on young Black love in contemporary England. It also refreshed this weary reader by bucking the trend among young writers for affectless prose reflecting a passive narrator. Azumah Nelson’s second novel, “Small Worlds,” is longer, looser and less successful. The narrator, Stephen, a young Black Englishman whose parents came to London from Ghana, is not passive, but not exactly an action man either. There’s a languid quality to his life as he ambles around Peckham, a South London neighborhood that was once down at heel and is now up-and-coming.

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Persons: Caleb Azumah Nelson Caleb Azumah Nelson’s, Azumah, Stephen, Stephen doesn’t, Mark Duggan Locations: England, London, Ghana, Peckham, South London