An American Marriage
Genre
Contemporary fiction, romance
Content Warnings
Sexual assault, abortion, violence, suicide, death or dying
Plot summary
Roy and Celestial have only been together for a year and a half when he goes to prison. Sentenced to 12 years in prison, for a crime he didn’t commit. Both have to rapidly adjust to entirely new lives, after having each been poised on the brink of success. When Roy’s conviction is overturned, and he’s released, he’s ready to pick up where he left off.
My thoughts on An American Marriage
An American Marriage, by Tayari Jones, is a beautifully written book. Written in the first-person, it cycles through three different perspectives over the course of the story. Roy, a young executive, on his way up in the world and proud of it. Celestial, an artist within reach of an exciting career. And Andre, their closest friend.
Jones does a brilliant job at conveying the characters’ personalities through their narration. Roy comes across as easy-going but somewhat evasive, Celestial as thoughtful and a little prickly. It isn’t until you get to part two of the story that you start to read from Andre’s perspective, but his narration has a sweetness to it.
The plot is laid out pretty starkly in the blurb, so you know going in that Roy isn’t going to serve his full sentence. Of course, the characters don’t know that, so you have to watch Roy and Celestial resign themselves to twelve years of separation. Twelve years of completely unfair, unjust separation, since there’s no way Roy could have committed the crime he’s accused of.
An American Marriage doesn’t gloss over the inherent racism of the criminal justice system. With that said, it also doesn’t exactly dwell on it. The book is, first and foremost, a love story. While racism is absolutely a factor in these characters’ lives, and something they refer to in conversation more than once, the book makes that a backdrop to the relationship dynamics that it’s primarily interested in examining.
It was tricky for me to get invested in the central romance
There are a lot of fascinating and compelling relationships in An American Marriage, many of them complicated in one way or another. Unfortunately, the one that I found least interesting was the one between Roy and Celestial. I appreciate that Jones made the effort to make their relationship nuanced, not fairy-tale perfection. But they seemed like such a bad fit for each other that I felt like the only thing keeping them together when Roy went to jail was a sense of obligation on Celestial’s part.
The story is told for a while in letters between the two, and there were moments in there where I was quite attached to them. But those moments were short-lived. Most of the time I just wondered how they’d ever decided to get married in the first place when they seemed to spend more time arguing than anything else. The two characters were more interesting to me as individuals than they were as husband and wife.
An American Marriage can be a frustrating read
Some of this is clearly intentional. Obviously, the situation at the heart of the book is frustrating in the unfairness of it. The characters also make their share of less-than-ideal decisions, making obvious mistakes in the way they try to solve problems or conflicts. I thought these were well-handled, so although it was hard to read at points, it was in service of a complicated story with no obvious right answers. The characters weren’t always likeable either, Roy in particular had some deeply unpleasant character moments. But as long as the writing is good, I don’t mind characters being ‘bad’, and that was definitely the case here.
The other thing I found frustrating, which I don’t think was intentional, was the habit of going backwards to go forwards. The story opens with necessary background, which I enjoyed. And then when Andre first shows up, he has to give us some back-story as well, which made sense. But there were a few more times when I was more than ready to see the plot progress, where I first had to read more about the histories of these characters. I can see why the author included those flashbacks, I totally appreciate their relevance to the story. My issue was that they felt like they got in the way of moving forwards, right at the point when I was most invested in what was going to happen next in the story’s ‘present’.
Other than that structural complaint, I can’t fault the writing in An American Marriage. I think Jones has a beautiful way with words, and it’s a credit to her storytelling that I was interested right up to the end of the book, despite not feeling all that invested in what was going to happen with the central relationship.
In summary…
Although I didn’t connect with the romance, I think the characters in An American Marriage are interesting. They’re in a challenging situation, and the book explores the different expectations placed on them as a result of it. It’s not an easy read, but the writing is excellent.
If you like a slow-burn plot, complicated characters and explorations of contemporary issues, then An American Marriage could be a great fit for you!
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