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A review by corinnekeener
An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
5.0
Tayari Jones has written what is probably the most expertly crafted novel I've read in ages. I'm not going to focus on the subject or plot of the novel as much here, because there are many reviews that have accomplished that wonderfully.
A portion of the novel is written in letters to and from Celestial and Roy during his sentence in prison, serving a term after having been accused and convicted of a rape that he did not commit. These letters are absolutely beautiful and among some of the best fictional letters I've ever read in a novel. They read the way that people truly write letters; some things about what they've been doing, but more about how they feel and what they are going through. They tell the story of their lives without reading like a script. The choice to use letters instead of phone conversations, to have the story told through writing instead of dialogue is one that I was surprised and entirely enamored by. It seems like there is so so much exposition told directly in dialogue in contemporary literature that these letters lend an air of timelessness to the novel.
Celestial, Roy, and Andre are each satisfyingly (if not sometimes a little maddeningly) complex people. The choices they make on the outset sometimes seem irrational, but only in the way that a reader could think to herself, "I wouldn't have done that" and then realize that she actually has no idea what she would have done. Put in to impossible positions, their actions are human above all else, they feel real and true to the choices and mistakes that real people make.
On Episode 16 of The Bookstore podcast we discuss An American Marriage. Since before we recorded to during our discussion to now, attempting to write out my thoughts, my feelings about this novel have shifted in tiny ways. Each time I turn it over in my mind I find something new to think about and discuss.
The book was maybe not fun to read, but it was immensely fulfilling.
A portion of the novel is written in letters to and from Celestial and Roy during his sentence in prison, serving a term after having been accused and convicted of a rape that he did not commit. These letters are absolutely beautiful and among some of the best fictional letters I've ever read in a novel. They read the way that people truly write letters; some things about what they've been doing, but more about how they feel and what they are going through. They tell the story of their lives without reading like a script. The choice to use letters instead of phone conversations, to have the story told through writing instead of dialogue is one that I was surprised and entirely enamored by. It seems like there is so so much exposition told directly in dialogue in contemporary literature that these letters lend an air of timelessness to the novel.
Celestial, Roy, and Andre are each satisfyingly (if not sometimes a little maddeningly) complex people. The choices they make on the outset sometimes seem irrational, but only in the way that a reader could think to herself, "I wouldn't have done that" and then realize that she actually has no idea what she would have done. Put in to impossible positions, their actions are human above all else, they feel real and true to the choices and mistakes that real people make.
On Episode 16 of The Bookstore podcast we discuss An American Marriage. Since before we recorded to during our discussion to now, attempting to write out my thoughts, my feelings about this novel have shifted in tiny ways. Each time I turn it over in my mind I find something new to think about and discuss.
The book was maybe not fun to read, but it was immensely fulfilling.