An American Marriage: Tayari Jones

I prefer to get my book recommendations from friends, book lovers I know and trust, not Oprah or Reese Witherspoon. And since I'd heard mixed reviews of An American Marriage by Tayari Jones, I was hesitant to start it.

Once I got started, though, I understood what all the hype was about. Jones has written a novel whose characters are many-layered. She follows that perfect formula for a novel in one way. Let the reader know the characters enough to care, and then get them into a lot of trouble. For Roy O. Hamilton, Jr., and his wife Celestial, the trouble--big trouble--comes just one year into their marriage.

Roy, a young black man who grew up in a small, poor Louisiana town first met his wife Celestial when they were in college in Atlanta. They were introduced by Andre, Roy's neighbor in his college apartment but Celestial's "boy next door" since childhood. They meet again in New York City when she's a rising artist and he's a young successful businessman with a bright future ahead. On a trip to visit his parents, one about which she had misgivings from the time they started out, Roy is falsely accused of a crime and sentenced to twelve years in jail.

Their time apart, particularly as Celestial's boutique business selling handmade dolls takes off, leaves Roy desperate for a lifeline to his former life. Told from the perspectives of Roy, Celestial, and Andre, the novel is beautifully written. Jones not only has a deft hand as she develops her complicated characters, but she uses the language so beautifully--without calling attention to the writing.

Jones also manages to deal honestly wth the plight of young African American men not only caught in the U.S. justice system but in the New South and the Old South, where their two world intersect. The book comes across as more than African American literature; it reads as an American story of an American marriage.

An American Marriage: Tayari Jones