Such a Fun Age: Book Review

Such a Fun Age plot summary

Ah, your twenties – such a fun age! Or not. Emira isn’t sure what she wants to do with her life. The little girl she babysits for is one of her favourite people in the world, but she’s short on money and even shorter on direction. What she can’t work out is how much of a problem that really is. Enter Alix, her employer, who finds herself desperate to help Emira find her way in the world. And if the motivation behind this impulse is a little questionable, well, who’s to know?

My thoughts on Such a Fun Age

Such a Fun Age, the debut novel by Kiley Reid, is one of those books that’s both great fun to read and incredibly thought-provoking. I don’t know if anybody else does this with books that start strong? But I think I was about four pages into this book when I closed it for a moment to enjoy the knowledge that I was going to have a really, really good time reading it. Sometimes I have this moment and end up being proved wrong, but not this time.

The story concerns Emira; Black, in her mid-twenties and employed as a babysitter by Alix; white, well-off, kind of a proto-influencer. The two women haven’t interacted much, beyond the hiring conversation and handovers of Alix’s daughter, before the novel starts.

The opening chapter has Emira being summoned from a birthday party, late at night, to look after two-year-old Briar. There, she gets confronted and basically accused of kidnapping the girl, and has to call Briar’s dad to get him to come and deal with the situation. It was excruciating to read.

Before the involvement of the security guard, Emira and Briar are having a dance party in the frozen aisle. But once other people get ‘concerned’ the situation quickly escalates. Things become increasingly hostile with this security guard, a concerned shopper and a guy who’s taken it upon himself to film the whole thing, until Emira calls Briar’s father to come and clarify things.

Some elements of the story didn’t play out in the way I was expecting from the blurb

Alix is mortified on Emira’s behalf when she finds out what happened, and wants to find a way to make it right. Now, I feel like the blurb implied this was going to be a learning experience that both Emira and Alix participated in. “So begins a crash course that will upend everything they think they know,” it reads. But the way the story plays out feels much more like Alix is stumbling along, blind to the troubling assumptions underpinning her desire to “help”, and Emira just wants to live her life.

It makes for a more uncomfortable read that way, but also a far more interesting one. Seeing the way Alix persists in thinking she needs to help Emira, and her increasingly creepy obsession with being liked by the younger woman. It’s unsettling at times! But it’s also fascinating.

The author tells the story by alternating between Emira’s and Alix’s perspectives, so we get to see both Emira’s mild bemusement at Alix’s actions, and Alix’s desperate need to earn… something. Friendship, approval, validation, not even she seems to know exactly what she wants from her babysitter.

I adored the writing in Such a Fun Age

For one thing, this book is frequently laugh-out-loud funny. The characters also felt incredibly real. I often found myself cringing for them, wanting to shake them, or just wishing I could hang out with them.

The story plays with time a little, isn’t entirely chronological, so that we can hop back to see some relevant backstory before returning to the events of the present. But it’s always totally clear where we are in the story.

The author demonstrates a real knack for combining poignant observations with small, incredibly relatable moments. I kept wanting to share specific lines and moments with my husband, only to interrupt him again a page later, “Okay, this is the last one, I promise, but this line is just so good…”

The characters and their relationships are a lot of fun as well

Emira has a small group of friends who come up a lot throughout the book. I thought they were all interesting, but I particularly loved Zara and Emira’s friendship. There’s one moment that really stuck out to me. They’re supposed to be celebrating a success of one of their other friends, and Emira isn’t really in the mood.

Zara very gently tells Emira that she needs to pull herself together and celebrate. It wasn’t a major scene, but it just felt like a perfect illustration of what makes for a great friendship. Somebody who can understand when you feel like crap, without letting you behave badly because of it.

Briar, the girl Emira babysits for, was unbelievably cute. I loved her. I think the relationship between Emira and Briar was just a beautiful, beautiful thing. Honestly, I’d give anything to read a spin-off book about their adventures and conversations.

Most of their evenings ended with Emira paging through a magazine while Briar played in the bathtub. Briar sat with her toes in her hands, her face a civil war of emotions, singing songs and trying to whistle. She’d have private conversations with herself, and Emira often heard her explain to the voices in her head, ‘No, Mira is my friend. She’s my special friend.’

Such a Fun Age, Kiley Reid

You can’t talk about Such a Fun Age without talking about racism

The book does a really good job of examining behaviours, actions and thought processes that come from a place of internalized racism. It doesn’t beat you over the head with anything, trusting in the author’s skill and readers’ perceptiveness to get the message across.

On the one hand, it’s merciless in its portrait of Alix. A white woman so sure that she’s doing the right thing while also being desperately patronising. On the other, it gives you a generous amount of time in her head, so you can see how deeply she believes that she’s operating with the best of intentions.

Take also Emira’s relationship with Kelley. This is the white man who recorded her altercation with the security guard, and who later runs into her again on a train. The two start seeing each other, and there are quite a few moments that give her pause. Things that make her wonder if there’s an element of fetishizing going on in his interest in her. But there are also times that he’s really great, and where she feels good about their relationship.

Instead of specifically accusing these characters of racism, it feels like the book invites you to consider the racist undertones and ideas behind their actions. To weigh up and question them, without necessarily condemning them.

In conclusion…

This book was a fascinating read, and I know I’ll be picking it up again and again. It made me think, it made me laugh, and it left me with a new appreciation for the blind spots I need to mind as a white person in a predominantly white environment. A book that can do that while still being indisputably fun is, I think, an incredible achievement. I heartily recommend it, and I’ll be keeping an eye out for any more novels from Kiley Reid!