book review: An American Marriage by Tayari Jones

 

AN AMERICAN MARRIAGE by Tayari Jones
★★★☆☆
Algonquin Books, 2018

 

I think this is a good book, if an unbalanced one. I felt like I was getting whiplash from the amount of times I veered from admiration to frustration and then back again. An American Marriage chronicles the doomed romance of Roy and Celestial: the two have a passionate (if slightly tempestuous) relationship, but only a year and a half into their marriage Roy is sentenced to 12 years in prison for a crime they both know he didn’t commit.

The first section of this book is, in my opinion, the most compelling. We watch Roy and Celestial’s marriage crumble through a series of letters they send one another while Roy is in prison. It’s hard not to be moved by the situation’s tragedy at this point: there’s never any question that Roy and Celestial love one another, but torn apart by circumstances outside of their control, the cracks that begin to form are unavoidable. Roy and Celestial aren’t particularly likable characters, and their relationship isn’t necessarily one we find ourselves rooting for, but I do have to admire the way Tayari Jones allows her protagonists to be imperfect.

In part 2, the novel’s momentum comes to a screeching halt. While the first hundred pages take place over five years, the next two hundred take place over a couple of days. So what was shaping up to be a rather pacy read becomes a bit of a slog at this point, and an oddly melodramatic one. And while Tayari Jones offers some wonderful and incisive commentary throughout about race, marriage, and parenthood, I did feel like the element of racial injustice in the US legal system was a bit underdeveloped. Instead the novel’s premise ultimately felt like a rather perfunctory backdrop which was being used to explore the strain a marriage undergoes while the partners are forced to separate. Certainly an interesting theme, but after several hundred pages of this I was hoping for a bit more depth in other areas which instead felt a bit contrived and simplistic.

But I will say, what I admired the most about this novel was how equitable it was. I didn’t feel like Tayari Jones was trying to manipulate the reader into taking either Roy or Celestial’s side, and I felt like she was very cognizant of the fact that there are no easy answers in a situation as convoluted as this one. So ultimately I’m just a bit torn – this was at times exhilarating and at times boring; sometimes incredibly perceptive and sometimes underdeveloped. I think this is a worthwhile read and a worthwhile addition to the Women’s Prize 2019 longlist, but ultimately it wasn’t as impactful as I thought it would end up being when I first picked it up. Still, it’s a quick and thought-provoking read and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it.

You can pick up a copy of An American Marriage here on Book Depository.