"An American Marriage," by Tayari Jones

Last year my friend (and longtime supporter of this blog) SB recommended to me the 2011 novel “Silver Sparrow,” by Tayari Jones. I read and was very impressed by it (see my post of 10/26/17). Now I have just read Jones’ most recent novel, “An American Marriage” (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2018), and found it equally well written and compelling. By the way, I am happy for this young rising star writer that this book was chosen for the Oprah’s Book Club 2018 selection. (I know some writers and readers scoff at the Oprah selections; you may remember the notorious case of Jonathan Franzen’s novel “The Corrections” being chosen for Oprah’s book club back in 2001, and his disparaging her taste in general and stating that it did not fit “the high-art literary tradition," upon which there was quite a backlash against Franzen, who was called arrogant and ungrateful.) (P.S. As readers of this blog may remember, I agree with those negative comments on Franzen.) The main characters in “An American Marriage” are Celestial and Roy, a young up-and-coming African American couple who seemed destined for a successful and happy life. But something terrible happens: Roy is arrested for, and convicted of, a crime he did not commit, and is sentenced to 12 years in prison. Celestial tries to stay loyal to Roy, but is drawn into a relationship with her childhood best friend, Andre. When Roy’s conviction is overturned and he is released from prison after five years, Celestial is agonizingly torn between the two men and two possible futures. The characters and plot are riveting enough, but in addition readers are drawn in, even if perhaps unwillingly (because of the painfulness of witnessing the blatant unfairness of Roy’s imprisonment, and the obvious racism involved in his being convicted of raping a white woman, solely because he is black and the rapist was black, so he "must have" been the rapist) to the horrors, dangers, and humiliations of incarceration in America’s prisons, especially for black men. Without being didactic, the author makes sure that we readers have to face up to the way black men are criminalized and treated in the U.S. penal system. The novel is psychologically astute about all three of the main characters, along with some peripheral characters such as parents, relatives, friends, and co-workers. And none of the possible answers are easy, even when there is a semi-resolution at the end of the novel. I highly recommend this novel, and will be watching for Tayari Jones’ future fiction.