An American Marriage

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones (2018)

I just read Tayari Jones for the first time earlier this year. I had been wanting to read Silver Sparrow for quite a while and finally got around to it, coincidentally, right around the time her newest novel was released. I loved how Jones wrote about her characters and their relationships so I was eager to try An American Marriage. Plus, who wouldn't be enticed by that gorgeous cover?

The marriage is between Celestial and Roy, who have only been married for a short time when Roy is arrested for a crime they both know he didn't commit. He is sentenced to twelve years in prison. While he is gone, Celestial continues building her artistic career making realistic dolls she calls poupées. But the length of his incarceration may be too much on a fledgling marriage, despite how much Roy and Celestial clearly care for each other. Chapters alternate viewpoints between the two characters, joined later by chapters from the perspective of Celestial's long-time friend Andre.

I loved the characters in this book, how realistic and flawed they were and how painful it was to see the strain on their relationship. Worse was the fact that it was so unnecessary, Roy having been falsely accused of this crime. His life had been going so well, and I don't have to explain what a setback prison is to someone just getting started on a career and marriage. Both Celestial and Roy had promising futures and were hoping to start a family and it was incredibly painful to see it all come tumbling down.

Celestial was an independent and strong woman, and Roy appreciated that about her. I remember thinking at one point while reading that none of the men in this book deserved her, but I do have to say that Roy was actually a really good guy. Several times he reflected on his behavior toward Celestial and admitted that he should have acted a different way. He owns up to his mistakes and honestly sets a pretty high bar for himself. Some of this comes through in conversations he has with his biological father, who he coincidentally meets in prison, and some is just through his own thoughts.

Jones's writing is straightforward and conversational, allowing the focus to be on the characters and what is happening rather than the way she is telling it. This makes it so easy to become immersed in the story, which I did as soon as I began and I easily read the whole book in just a few days. If you haven't read this author before I highly recommend giving her a try.

Silver Sparrow

Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones (2011)

James Witherspoon is a bigamist. It's 1980s Atlanta and he balances his time between two families - the "legitimate" one and the secret one. In each family he has a teenaged daughter, each of whom in turn tells this story. The first half of the book is told by Dana, who has grown up knowing that her father has another family who he lives with most of the time, just stealing away regularly to visit Dana and her mother. Because his other daughter Chaurisse is around the same age, great pains were taken to make sure the girls didn't come into contact with each other and the sacrifice always had to be Dana's. In the second half of the book, the narration is from Chaurisse. Rather than getting the same story from another perspective, it picks up after the events of the first half, though we do get some back story as well.

I've been wanting to read this book since I first heard of it, soon after it was published. I'm not gonna lie, I was drawn to it because my father also had another family and I had never read anything about that kind of family situation before. This was a very different situation on the outside - these are black families in Atlanta as opposed to white families in rural Maine - but thematically it is the same and even took place in the 80s when I was also a teenager, though I think Dana and Chaurisse were a couple of years older than me.

The story is written in an easy conversational style that I really liked reading, and I think it would have teen appeal. I also really loved how 1980s it was - there was even a reference to George Burns in the Oh, God! movies, which I had completely forgotten about, so I had a nice moment of nostalgia there. Of course the meat of the novel is about the two related families and the man who ties them together. I like that Jones didn't paint James Witherspoon as a horrible person, just a flawed one, and didn't make either of his families more or less sympathetic. Everyone in this story is imperfect, but they feel real and their problems are no more or less dramatic than real life.

I found the ending a bit rushed, to be honest. There is a climactic event, shall we say, and it all wraps up pretty quickly after that. The second half of the book is told from Chaurisse's perspective, but the epilogue goes back to Dana and I wish it had been much longer. I want to know her motivations for doing things we learned she did from Chaurisse's story, and I wanted more about the emotional fallout from the events from both views. So my only criticism is that I wanted more, which means that I'll definitely be interested in reading more from this author.

Tayari Jones has a new book out, in fact, called American Marriage. It's very popular as it was picked as an Oprah book so I've already put myself on the wait list. I really like how Jones writes about unusual family situations so I think I'm really going to like the new book as well. As I mentioned, I first heard of Silver Sparrow several years ago, but I kept being reminded of it through recommendations such as this great list of 100 Books by Black Women Everyone Must Read. I put it on my 2018 TBR Pile Challenge and it's now the 3rd book from my challenge list that I've read so far this year.