An American Marriage

“When I first started calling you Georgia, it was because I could tell you were homesick. Now I call you that because I’m the one missing home and home is you.”

‘An American Marriage’ is a powerful story of love, loyalty, and injustice driven by beautiful prose.
I’ve read a few books which discuss racial inequalities and the injustice of the US legal system. Anyone can be wrongly convicted. However, the sad reality is that juries are more likely to convict a black man than a white man. 

In ‘An American Marriage’, Jones provides a social commentary on race. However, at the forefront lies an exploration of injustice itself and the effects it has on relationships of all forms. To achieve this, she has created a cast of characters so rich and fleshed out that I forgot that they were fiction. The hardships they face are real, and Jones sheds light on the poignant reality which hundreds of black Americans experience every day.

The novel focuses on the newlywed couple, Roy and Celestial, who are torn apart by circumstances out their control. Roy is accused and convicted of a crime he didn’t commit. As a result, their marriage is challenged as they are forced to undergo a test of loyalty.

The story jumps from alternating first-person perspectives to an epistolary section during Roy’s time in prison. As the years pass by, the letters become less frequent, feelings change, and Jones makes us consider whether loyalty can always be expected in a marriage. 

There was a seamless shift in perspectives. Roy, Celestial, and lifelong friend Andre were all interesting and by the end, I didn’t know who to sympathise with. They all made their own mistakes. They were all flawed. But, they were all real.

An American Marriage explores how the unjust legal system impacts not only those who are wrongly accused but how it marks everyone around them. It affects the newly wedded wife, the widowed father, lifelong friends. They’re suddenly forced to confront hardships they never anticipated. Jones succeeds in portraying the far-reaching impact of racial injustice and it was outstanding.

AN AMERICAN MARRAIGE has been on my radar for a while, I knew it was going to be a tough read so I had to be ready to go in. This isn’t a love story, it is a life story. It was a tough read but I am all the richer for having read this story and the world of literature is richer for this realistic representation of hell raining down on an innocent black man.

Celestine and Roy didn’t have the perfect marriage but it was real, they argued, they communicated and they worked on it; they were happy. All that was stolen from them in an instant in a cruel and unjust way. What plays out is the passing of years and their experiences and those of their families and friends.

The trials Roy existed through were brutally tough to read but I felt transported to his lived experience and I was willing his position to a place of improvement. Celestine was a feminist, I admired her tenacity and ability to exist and continue...until I didn’t. What happened with these characters that I became so very invested in, made me feel very conflicted. Their decisions, their journeys were painful but real and I felt crushed at various junctures. 

Sometimes love just isn’t enough, sometimes there isn’t enough love. My mind is still knotted, wondering about the what-ifs and the maybe if... One thing is for sure, this injustice happens, most likely on a daily basis and so this was an important story to tell. 

I’ve come out of this read not feeling in love with these characters because, guess what, they were flawed. I have come out of this read incredibly impressed by the narrative voice of Tayari Jones and her ability to tell the tough tale with heart, passion and grit.

“Much of life is timing and circumstance, I see that now. Roy came into my life at the time when I needed a man like him...But how you feel love and understand love are two very different things.”

I voluntarily read an early copy of this book.

Having heard so much about this book from my fellow book buddies I just knew had to read it. 
It’s a great story . Fantastic read. Strong story , characters are well written.
A must read, 
Thank you to both NetGalley and the publishers for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for my honest unbiased review

"Love makes a place in your life, it makes a place for itself in your bed. Invisibly, it makes a place in your body, rerouting all your blood vessels, throbbing right alongside your heart. When it’s gone, nothing is whole again.” 

Before I even start, I want to say, brazenly, that An American Marriage is, so far, my favourite read of 2018. A bold statement but a worthy one. In this exquisite novel, we are introduced to Roy and Celestial, a young black couple, newly married and living in Atlanta. They are educated members of the new post-integration African-American generation but are nonetheless informed about oppression by their loving parents. As husband and wife, they love each other passionately but are both stubborn in their ways and ideals, and they argue as much as they relate to each other. Like any newlyweds, they are figuring out themselves and each other, and are navigating their way around their new household. Despite being from different backgrounds, they have found a comforting connection with each other. Roy has worked hard to excel himself beyond his working-class background., earning a scholarship to university. Celestial is an up-and-coming artist from a middle-class home. They have dreams of becoming successful and rich, and not just "black-rich". On a trip to Roy's homestead one weekend, the couple are thrown into a series of events that will upend them, and a chance meeting at a motel changes the direction of their young lives forever.

"Much of life is timing and circumstance, I see that now."

After just 18 months of marriage, Roy is wrongly convicted of aggravated sexual assault and sentenced to 12 years in a prison. On paper, he is an innocent man, happily married, college-educated, gainfully-employed, who does all the right things to succeed, but in a criticism of the current criminal justice system in America, particularly in relation to how it treats black men, he is nonetheless sidelined to a concrete cell. Over the course of the next 50 pages, give or take, Roy and Celestial go through the motions of grief, despair and anger, through personal letters, before coming to acceptance of their situation. After five years, Roy is released from prison and returns to the life he once knew, but Celestial has found comfort in a lifelong friend, and has a difficult decision to make.

While this novel looks at a very current and important issue - with major discussion of race-based injustice and racial profiling of young black men in America - it goes so much further. It looks in depth at the consequences of injustice themselves, and how individual lives are affected by them. It delves into the quiet devastation and the personal loss experienced by individuals and their families, the traumatic aftermath. This isn't a a courtroom drama or a vivid examination of prison politics: it is the story of the loss of hope of romantic love and the loss of dreams, the disintegration of marriage and of family, and ultimately the impossible wedge driven between a couple. It is also an intimate look at communication and truth and how it surfaces through dialogue; both in letters and, later, in face-to-face contact.

What I was completely blown away by when I read this book was its look at the meaning of marriage as an institution and its exploration of why people really get married. It pokes at the meaning of loyalty within a marriage and the limits of that loyalty. The question it ultimately asks of our female protagonist is: What are the boundaries of responsibility when you are married? Must Celestial provide unwavering devotion because she agreed to marry Roy? And because she is part of a prejudiced culture, should she compensate for staying in a marriage, with a man she no longer wants? Or is she just as free as any other woman to fall out of love and to reject a life that she doesn't want? Chance and racism may have drawn a path for her, but should she be expected to follow it? 

Despite it's relatively short length, this book touches on so much. It explores family politics and disapproving in-laws, flawed families of origin and the expectation of grandchildren - all things newly married couples must deal with. It is so very authentic in its depiction of fleshed-out characters with true struggles, and the drama is utterly compelling. As well as being an intimate look at marriage, it focuses in on other relationships: fathers and sons, biological and adoptive; mothers and sons; lifelong friends, and more. 

The depth of understanding Tayari Jones has for the human condition - for humanness - and for intimate relationships is just breathtaking. How she delves into families and their pasts, their histories, how this shapes them as people, the generational ties that form them; it really is just a marvel to witness. There is a wisdom in Jones' writing that is so unique, one that I haven't encountered since I read the work of Gloria Naylor. The words within this book are mesmerising, and delivered with a clarity that is just awe-inspiring. 

I don't think I can say enough about this phenomenal book. It is thought-provoking and subtle, but oh so powerful. A very well-deserved five stars; more if I could award them. 2018 Book of the Year, for me. Yes, I went there.

"Love makes a place in your life, it makes a place for itself in your bed.  Invisibly, it makes a place in your body, rerouting all your blood vessels, throbbing right alongside your heart.  When it's gone, nothing is whole again."

This book tells the story of a marriage, from the meeting of two people, first flourishes of love, a proposal, engagement, a wedding.  Celestial and Roy, a black couple, are from the South and both from slightly different backgrounds, his being poor and hers being new money.  She is a free spirited artist and he is an ambitious salesman.  As newly weds, their marriage is not perfect, however, they work on it and find ways together to overcome any impasse that presents itself.  After 18 months of marriage, Roy is wrongly convicted of aggravated sexual assault on a woman whose race we are not privy to.  He is convicted and sentenced to 12 years in jail.  

For the first couple of years, we are given an insight into how they both cope with Roy's incarceration through letters back and forth between the couple.  The grief, anger, despair, and hopelessness is plain to read as they find themselves in a nightmarish situation that may not have happened had Roy been a different race.  They, and their families, are devastated.  Celestial's father bankrolls his brother in law, an attorney, to try to get an appeal heard and have the conviction overturned.   

After five years Roy is released.  However, for the last two years of his prison term, Celestial has not be visiting him, having said that she cannot continue being married in this vein.  Roy clings to hope that, as she is still paying money into his prison commissary and has not taken the steps to divorce him, that he still has a fighting chance to win Celestial back and to save his marriage.  Celestial, on the other hand, has moved on and in her mind, Roy is her husband, but in an abstract "gone away" kind of way.  All that changes when Roy comes home desperate to pick up with Celestial where they left off 5 years earlier. 

I loved this book.  I read it in 2 days, hardly being able to put it down.  The writing is exquisite and draws you in completely on the feelings and experiences of all the characters.  The characters themselves are very well drawn out and developed, though each is flawed, you can empathise with each character in their own hopeless/hopeful dilemma.  Setting aside the humanizing take on a miscarriage of justice, it is a gripping, moving and poignant story of a marriage, of love, of the familial ties, both past and present, that bind us, of devastation and heartbreak, and is a story that will stay with me for a long time.   Highly recommend.

A hugely important book for our times, I found myself highlighting numerous passages. Whilst very quotable, I found myself reading the first half much quicker than the second. Nonetheless, a very easy book to recommend to a wide range of my friends

Such a great book, I raced through this. So beautifully crafted, clever and compulsive. There are so many big things that happen within this book, and yet it's the minutiae of the relationships and their shifts which drive the book. Brilliant!

It just so happened that I was halfway through reading Tayari Jones’ fourth novel, An American Marriage, when the Women’s Prize for Fiction longlist was released at midnight on Sunday. Though I had already seen and read many positive reviews, the pressure on An American Marriage to be anything short of spectacular was mounting. And, despite a few clumsy sentences, Jones’ writing was flawless and dripping in emotion in a way that wasn’t overly wrought.

Detailing the breakdown of a marriage, Jones’ novel gives the reader an intimate insight into the relationship between Roy and Celeste. It’s clear from the beginning that something life-changing and irrevocable is going to happen in the early stages of their union. Visiting Roy’s parents in Eloe, Louisiana, he decides to come clean about his upbringing. Telling Celeste that Roy Senior isn’t actually his biological father as they make their way back to the motel they’ve booked just outside of Eloe, they end up in a huge argument. Desperate to start a family – and further cement their union – Roy finds it necessary to confide in Celeste that he actually has no idea who his father is. All he knows is that he’s a good-for-nothing man who left his mother, Olive, as soon as he found out she was pregnant. Feeling betrayed at Roy’s lack of honesty and out of place in Roy’s childhood home, Celeste is about to drag Olive’s name into the argument. In a fit of protectiveness, Roy shouts out their safe word, putting a fifteen-minute halt on their feud.

It is these fifteen minutes, as Roy leaves the motel room to fill up the ice bucket, that changes the course of their lives forever. Helping carry the ice bucket for a neighbouring woman who reminds him of his mother, Roy returns to his room fifteen minutes later and slips into bed beside a calmer Celeste. Their argument has cooled and they fall asleep. As both of their accounts are written in hindsight, I wouldn’t say they fell asleep unaware of what is about to befall them, but in the moment they would have been completely surprised. In the early hours of the morning their hotel room is kicked down and they’re both dragged from the bed never to be together again. Roy is arrested for a crime he didn’t commit and, as a black man in America, is quickly found guilty. Finding new ways to live with this situation as time passes, the bonds that tied Roy and Celeste together weaken. As their time apart exceeds their time together as a married couple, their relationship distorts into a different image.

An American Marriage is a beautifully intimate and heart-wrenching exposé of the dissolution of a relationship. Through first person narratives, which switch between all the characters involved, and through personal letters Jones brings us into the heart of Roy and Celeste’s thoughts and feelings as they try to navigate the love, loyalty, distance and separation they feel as weeks grow into month and months into years. Marriage is put under a microscope in Jones’ novel and all the anxieties that this kind of union evokes.

Contributing to the large body of literature that zones in on marriage and relationships, I would agree with the Atlantic review that: ‘With An American Marriage, Jones joins this conversation in a quietly powerful way. Her writing illuminates the bits and pieces of a marriage: those almost imperceptible moments that make it, break it, and forcefully tear it apart’. Jones’ writing is subtle but forceful, the characters feel fully fleshed out as we witness their innermost thoughts and struggles and the story is unforgettable, calling into question the legal system in America with its systemically racist foundations. An American Marriage deserves its place on the Women’s Prize for Fiction longlist.

This book drew me in from the first page and held me captive all the way to the last word.  That doesn't happen very often, but I just loved everything about this. 

Roy and Celestial, newly-weds,  full of hope for a long and happy future together, are suddenly thrust into a terrible, life-changing situation no-one could have foreseen.  Torn apart they struggle to maintain the love they had, writing letters on an almost daily basis.  Roy feels no different towards Celestial, but she struggles to hold on to it and eventually turns to her lifelong friend Andre for comfort and support.  Whilst Roy's life now moves in a straight line, Celestial has turned her doll-making into a successful business.

Each of these three characters tells the story from their own perspective, and you can't help but feel sympathetic for each of them caught up in a nightmarish situation.  The voices of Roy and Celestial and Andre are so real.  The writing is sublime, the characters so believable. It's dramatic, funny, charming, heartbreaking... I'm running out of adjectives. I was sorry to get to the end of this as it's like saying Goodbye to three friends.

This is definitely one I'll go back to. Why have I not heard of this author before? A quick look on the internet shows she already has a couple of books to her name, so I must have a look at them.

My thanks to Netgalley for an ARC download.