Book Review: An American Marriage
My copy of this book has two commendations from Barack Obama quoted on it, one on both the front and back of the cover; ‘the international bestseller’ is centred top and middle on the front, and the logo of the Women’s Prize for Fiction is printed on it too, letting us know this book was the 2019 ‘WINNER’. Regardless, as a card-carrying romantic, who is divorced, books about marriage do not always appeal to me, they provoke a lot of unwieldy emotions. What made it irresistible, was Tayari Jones saying this is a novel about, “what we owe each other.” For me, this is a question that I think takes a life’s work to understand, and will inevitably require revisions long after we think we’ve got the answer defined.
Tayari Jones cites the inspiration of the novel,
“I was in a shopping mall, and I heard a couple arguing. They were in love and in trouble. She said, “Roy you know you wouldn’t have waited on me for seven years.” And he shot back, “This wouldn’t have happened to you in the first place.” I was intrigued by the complexity and intensity of their disagreement. ”
In summation, this book revolves around the demise of Roy and Celestial’s marriage and the question of whether marriage ever really means the same thing to different people. Andre is the third main character, someone who tries to support them both, he is caught in the crosshairs of events beyond his control that cause his self-restraint to falter.
The end of the blurb forewarns, “a profoundly insightful look into the hearts and minds of three unforgettable characters“ - immediately establishing the paradox of a title that mentions a marriage, between two people, and an admission that this is a story of three. It reminds me of the infamous Princess Diana line, “well, there was three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded“. Sometimes things happen like that. Prince Charles’s life bore the weight of expectation from the monarchy, pushing him towards marrying a woman 14 years the junior of his chosen partner (prioritising the likelihood of obtaining heirs to the family line over his happiness); in the book, Celestial was on a path that diverged after a different type of institutional intervention, but, arguably, neither character’s free will would have taken them down the roads the interventions propelled them towards.
The blurb also tells us straight up that there will be a wrongful conviction and the husband will be sent to jail. On the surface, the jail sentence is the cause of the disequilibrium between the couple, but this isn’t the only reason, and the book explores the other subtle, but destabilising, forces we fight in secret with ourselves when trying to make a relationship work. Racial injustice colours the key events and experiences of each of the narrators, but it is not the anchor that holds all their narratives together (despite it being something they all have in common). This is something that I really appreciate about this book. It doesn’t shy away from commenting on the profiling and false imprisonment of black men, but it also leaves space for other things to shine, giving each character agency. (Picture Blood Brothers, without all the sledgehammer inevitability of each and every one of their fates.)
Celestial is successful in her career as a doll maker, a trade not easy to break into, one that takes dedication, focus and an unusual skillset. Through her, Roy’s lawyer, and the Davenports, we see successful black people. They are still experiencing oppression alongside their successes, but we are shown the beauty of their houses, the eloquence of their language and the complexity of their familial hierarchies. This book isn’t a series of events with predictable conversation put in purely to drive us between each one, every page bursts with the nuanced positionality of each character. There’s depth enough to drown in: race, class, gender, generational shifts, trauma and geography palpably influence each of the characters and their decisions, dreams and fears. I find myself wanting to sit down beside every one of these characters and listen to more of their stories, this is not something I usually feel! Not one character is throw away, they all contribute to a hive of community that buzzes messages through the mind of each person, regardless of their determination to live their own way.
In a love story, what we often want is for it be obvious that one partner is the ‘right‘ one. We are looking for signs and hundred percents and proof of destiny, if a lover we liked needs to discarded, or a protagonist we’re rooting for must bear pain, we want it to turn out to be worth it, by being definitively provided with a better match. This book doesn’t do that. Maybe each of them could have chosen differently and still ended up as happy, or happier. But this is the charm of the book for me, showing how the choice isn’t always clear, easy, obvious, or necessarily ‘right‘ - our choices sometimes just need to be made, stuck to, and lived with. Choices need time to breathe. Not choosing is not a choice. Living in the chaos of uncertain choice is the bell this book is ringing.
Examples of Tayari Jones’s style:
“The years had clearly grabbed him by the throat. He was the same age as my father, give or take, but his back was stooped and wrinkles pulled at the corner of his mouth. This is the face of a man who has loved too hard. I compared him with my own father, vain and handsome, complexion as smooth as glass.”
”She’s the kid of woman who will never belong to anyone. This is the truth that you have to lean close to see. Picture a twenty-dollar bill. You think it’s green, but when you get up close you find that it’s beige linen with dark green ink. Now consider Celestial. Even while she wore his ring, she wasn’t his wife. She was merely a married woman.”
You might like An American Marriage if you enjoyed:
Hand Me Down World by Lloyd Jones
I Know Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
