An American Marriage by Tayari Jones

 

“A woman doesn't always have a choice, not in a meaningful way. Sometimes there is a debt that must be paid, a comfort that she is obliged to provide, a safe passage that must be secured. Everyone of us has lain down for a reason that was not love.”

I read this novel quite some time ago and haven’t gotten around to reviewing it until now. My recollections are overwhelmingly emotional, rather than detail focused. This was a reading experience that toyed with so many different feelings and I suspect that each reader would have a very different response to it. The overarching response that they might share would undoubtedly be a sense of marvel at how fantastic Tayari Jones is as a writer. Her prose is captivating, easy to read and extremely emotive. In case you can’t tell, I think the novel is fabulous!

Before embarking on the novel you’ll no doubt glance at the blurb and think whoa “An explosive love story about a marriage interrupted”, is this going to hold my interest? Well that was my response and it did more than hold my interest. I absolutely devoured the pages.

Newly married couple Roy and Celestial have the world at their feet until Roy is arrested for a rape that he did not participate in. Unfairly incarcerated, Roy spends twelve years in jail for a crime he didn’t commit, clinging desperately to the hope of returning to his loving wife on the outside, while dealing with other startling revelations about his family while in prison.

Outside, Celestial lives a very different existence and seeks comfort from her friend from childhood and the best man at their wedding, Andre. Circumstances conspire so that every party suffers and the sense of guilt and abandonment and betrayal ooze from the pages as pungently as the need for love and solace. Each character’s emotional journey draws you further in and things become even more complicated once Roy’s conviction is overturned after five years.

This is a novel that says so much about an unfair system, about families about feelings and about life while narrowing in on the stories of the central characters with an immediacy that makes your hairs stand on end.




5 out of 5 - Oprah and Barrack Obama were right, this is an amazing book.