A NEW YORK TIMES AND WASHINGTON POST NOTABLE BOOK A 2018 BEST OF THE YEAR SELECTION OF NPR * TIME * BUSTLE * O, THE OPRAH MAGAZINE * THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS * AMAZON.COM OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB 2018 SELECTION LONGLISTED FOR THE 2018 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION “A moving portrayal of the effects of a wrongful conviction on a young African-American couple.” –Barack Obama “Haunting . . . … of a wrongful conviction on a young African-American couple.” –Barack Obama
“Haunting . . . Beautifully written.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Brilliant and heartbreaking . . . Unforgettable.” —USA Today
“A tense and timely love story . . . Packed with brave questions about race and class.” —People
“Compelling.” —The Washington Post
“Epic . . . Transcendent . . . Triumphant.” —Elle
Newlyweds Celestial and Roy are the embodiment of both the American Dream and the New South. He is a young executive, and she is an artist on the brink of an exciting career. But as they settle into the routine of their life together, they are ripped apart by circumstances neither could have imagined. Roy is arrested and sentenced to twelve years for a crime Celestial knows he didn’t commit. Though fiercely independent, Celestial finds herself bereft and unmoored, taking comfort in Andre, her childhood friend, and best man at their wedding. As Roy’s time in prison passes, she is unable to hold on to the love that has been her center. After five years, Roy’s conviction is suddenly overturned, and he returns to Atlanta ready to resume their life together.
This stirring love story is a profoundly insightful look into the hearts and minds of three people who are at once bound and separated by forces beyond their control. An American Marriage is a masterpiece of storytelling, an intimate look deep into the souls of people who must reckon with the past while moving forward–with hope and pain–into the future.
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Tayari Jones came to Phoenix on her book tour, and because she was warm and charming, perhaps I was predisposed to like this contemporary novel. But I wasn’t even three pages in before I realized how accomplished the writing is, how deft the narrative voice. The book is told from several perspectives: those of the married couple Ray and Celestial, and their friend Andre.
Because I believe an author’s writing speaks best for itself, here is a sample from Ray’s first entry: “Atlanta is where I learned the rules and learned them quick. No one ever called me stupid. But home isn’t where you *land*; home is where you *launch*. You can’t pick your home any more than you can choose your family. In poker, you get five cards. Three of them you can swap out, but two are yours to keep: family and native land.”
The plot begins when Ray is wrongly convicted of a crime; and the book traces the effects on a person, on a marriage, and on a community. With richly developed secondary characters and a voice that is neither embittered nor preachy, I found this book heartbreaking, raw, and real. Given the current discussions and the #BlackLivesMatter movement, this book feels very timely. Highly recommend.
This was just such a wonderful story. I wasn’t sure the author would be able to pull all the pieces together in the end, but she certainly did.
This is one of the best books I have read this year. The character development is exceptional and the twists and turn of the plot are unexpected. It is gripping, moving and and very emotional. Be prepared to be educated and to see different perspectives. It is a book you will think of for days after reading.
An American Marriage asks hard questions about injustice and betrayal, and answers them with a heartbreaking and genuinely suspenseful love story in which nobody’s wrong and everybody’s wounded. Tayari Jones has written a complex and important novel about people trapped in a tragic situation, struggling to reconcile their responsibilities and desires.
Tayari Jones’ An American Marriage is a stunning epic love story filled with breathtaking twists and turns, while bursting with realized and unrealized dreams. Skillfully crafted and beautifully written, An American Marriage is an exquisite, timely, and powerful novel that feels both urgent and indispensable.
This is One of the better books I have read in ages. When you read the book you literally feel like you are the character who is being portrayed. The book gives you a great sense of reality for African American life and ingrained societal treatment of individuals. The story moves at a realistic pace and one is able to empathize with each person’s perspective. I couldn’t put it down!
Forget for a moment that it is an Oprah pick because this is not why I read and loved this book. I enjoy this author’s work and an American Marriage did not disappoint. Celestial and Roy are newlyweds who travel together from Atlanta to visit Roy’s parents in a small town in Louisiana. After dinner Roy tells his parents he made reservations at a hotel and they would not be spending the night in their home. This is where an already questionable marriage really begins to go down the slippery slope. Roy is arrested at the hotel for a crime he did not commit and both Celestial and Roy suffer on this night from lies to each other coming to the forefront and the indignity of being under arrest. The book is told in three parts and an epilogue with each chapter changing the viewpoint as told by Roy, Celestial, and Andre. How each viewpoint tells an individual’s side of the story from college to present unearths their true selves.
I will never forget the day that my friend S.C. asked if I’d ever read Tayari Jones. “She’s an Atlanta author; I think you’d like her.” Of course, I hadn’t read her, so I started with her debut, Leaving Atlanta, an emotionally gripping, attention grabbing tale about the Atlanta Child Murders. I moved on to The Untelling, which was so good that I couldn’t WAIT until Silver Sparrow was released. I snatched it up on the day of publication and so happily handed it over to Ms. Jones for her to sign it when she came to Atlanta. It remains my favorite of her novels.
But it has been YEARS since she published a full novel, and one misses the good words when there is such a dearth in black fiction. I was overjoyed to hear she had begun working on a new novel, and it took some time, but I want to offer my thanks to the publisher for an advanced copy because I just couldn’t wait one more second to dig into this book!
As I always say, I love when I open a book and I am instantly transported into that world, that time. I feel like a fly on the wall, listening to characters talk, watching the action, interpreting and rationalizing. The beginning chapters of this book set the scene– Celestial and Roy, newly married, in that ‘newly married’ kind of bliss, still sort of figuring each other out and trying to manage the in-law relationship as well. On a trip to visit Roy’s parents, they decide to stay at a hotel instead of a room at the house where they’d normally stay. Roy has special plans, he wants to show Celestial a special spot.
I can’t help but think that if Roy hadn’t been so ambitious with his plans, the story would have a different ending. But it doesn’t. Even in the New South, old thinking exists. A claim against a black man, true or not, can send that man’s life into a tailspin. Celestial finds herself alone– not a divorcee and not a widow. A married woman whose husband is incarcerated for a crime he did not commit, who is expected to be locked away for quite some time.
There are a few other dynamics that add to the dramatic tension and held my rapt attention. Roy’s family structure, for one. Celestial and Roy’s relationship for another. I felt that it wasn’t strong enough to endure this kind of challenge and pressure. They’d only lived the blissful, dreamy part of love together. They hadn’t been through the trial and tribulation of having to live apart, yet committed to one another. And as much as Roy expected Celestial to be ‘ride or die’ for him, I also felt, through the pages, her slipping away from him, unable to give him the loyalty he longed for and felt, whether or not it was wrong, that he deserved.
Holy drama, and scandal and tension, Batman. At a certain point, things come to an emotional and physical head and I really wondered how things were going to settle out. I think one of my favorite parts of the book is the letters. They let the story play out, in the words of Roy and Celeste, even though they couldn’t be in the same room. Ms. Jones recently shared a piece about how technology can affect and script communication between characters; sometimes a novel has to be set in a time and a place that makes communication difficult. At one point in the book, there’s no way for one character to contact the other, leading one to walk right into a trap, per se… the tension that that situation built was palpable and effective.
I think this book has multiple levels and conversation/talking points. Its many facets and depths would be great for a book club discussion. Ms. Jones did a fantastic job with this novel. Like Silver Sparrow, I can see myself reading it again and again, just for the initial enjoyment I felt at reading her words.
An amazing account of false accusation, wrongful conviction, and ruined lives of young and competent spouses. Because he was black, nobody believed him and fewer cared. The terrible destiny of marriage under un-justice. How will you ever believe a judge after you’ve read it?
Utterly heart wrenching while also heartwarming. This moving novel touches on the complexities of love, friendship, and being true to yourself. with surprising answers.
An American Marriage, by Tayari Jones, is a Literary Fiction novel that revolves around a miscarriage of justice as old as American history and still present in today’s black communities. First and foremost, An American Marriage is well written and crafted in a highly effective style. The story is told in the third and first-person POV with intimate letters over five years between the main characters, husband and wife, Roy and Celestial. These correspondences are written from the heart, giving the reader insight into Roy and Celestial’s heart and soul, and revealing their deepest desires and fears.
Celeste and Roy have great plans for their life and marriage. Both are young, well-educated college graduates, ambitious, in love, and just starting their lives together. Newlyweds married a little over a year, they have their spats and misgivings about marriage. Perhaps too many for a new marriage.
Planning a road trip to visit Roy’s parents in Eloe, Louisiana Celestial had some inkling of danger that Roy perceived much too late.
“Looking back on it, it’s like watching a horror flick and wondering why the characters are so determined to ignore the danger signs. When a spectral voice says, get out, you should do it. But in real life, you don’t know that you’re in a scary movie . . .”
After visiting Roy’s parents, Roy and Celeste book a room at the Piney Woods Hotel where they have yet another argument. Celeste supposes there will always be fights, misgivings, and reconciliations.
“. . . we would grow old together, accusing and forgiving?… I believed that our marriage was a fine-spun tapestry, fragile but fixable. We tore it often and mended it, always with a silken thread, lovely but sure to give way.”
Little did they know the misfortune looming at the Piney Woods Hotel. Something that will test their marriage, their resolve, and their life from that night forward.
After their argument, Roy leaves the room to get a bucket of ice and encounters an older woman at the ice machine. Polite banter occurs about her injured arm wrapped in an arm sling. Being a gentleman, Roy carries her bucket of ice back to her room, helps her open a window, and fix a minor plumbing problem in the bathroom.
“I left. She thanked me; I called her ma’am. It was 8:48 p. m. I know this because I checked my watch . . .”
Later that evening, after being accused of rape by the woman he’d met at the ice machine, policemen burst into Roy’s room, drag him from the bed into the parking lot.
But Celeste knows he’s Innocent.
“Roy was with me all night. She doesn’t know who hurt her, but I know who I married. I married Roy Othaniel Hamilton… The only thing that my good man ever hurt was his own hands.
Roy is wrongfully incarcerated, however, his wife, family, and friends are staunch believers, and never doubt his innocence. But is belief enough to restore a man’s integrity, dignity, marriage, life?
During Roy’s incarceration, the fabric of their marriage unravels. Letters written the first months and years of Roys’s term are consistent, passionate, reaffirming their love. But with time, those letters reveal pain, mistrust, uncertainty. Can a marriage, barely a year old, tenuous at best, with little foundation, survive a twelve-year prison term?
While Celestial’s passion for designing cloth dolls becomes a thriving business success, Roy languishes behind bars. Animosity, jealousy, and mistrust arise. Will their love survive this tragedy? Or was the marriage fractured before Roy’s conviction? I cannot reveal much more, but An American Marriage is truly a must-read novel.
Ms. Jones, thank you for the fantastic, well-written, emotionally-charged, heartbreaking story. I highly recommend this to all.
https://edenisebillups.com/2019/10/04…
Stark, vivid, real, and gritty, these are the words that spring to mind upon reflecting on An American Marriage. Author Tayari Jones takes the premise of an unjust, nightmarish turn of fate and unfurls a novel length treatise on a budding marriage systematically derailed, when a year and a half into marriage, Roy is incarcerated for a crime he didn’t commit. It is a modern marriage, and newlyweds Roy Jr. and Celestial have promising careers on the rise. Roy is a young business executive, who aspires to setting his artisan wife up in business as the maker of novelty dolls in her own Atlanta shop. The couple is in the exhilarating throes of reconciling their fiercely independent natures with their unified plans for the future. They are ambitious, deeply in love, and navigating their marital positions, when an insignificant tiff arises while on vacation, and their life is irrevocably changed outside their hotel room from their mutually declared, fifteen-minute time-out.
Whether it is the bad luck of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or the suspicions levied on Roy as a black man in the South, justice is not immediately served when Roy is falsely accused of a crime. As time ekes by during Roy’s twelve-year sentence, Celestial gets her career off the ground, while Roy remains stuck behind bars. Issues of commitment and fidelity under duress evolve, as Celestial finds comfort in the arms of her and Roy’s mutual friend, Andre, then reasonable expectations are called to the fore when a love triangle unwittingly grows. When Roy is released five years into his sentence, the three main characters in An American Marriage take stock of their current standing. They are individuals with differing vantage points within the confines of a tribal whole.
With laser sharp insight into human nature, Tayari Jones gifts the reader with three plausible, first person narratives in this intertwined story of cause and effect set upon the fertile ground of modern day black culture. Her language is paradoxically direct and textured as she probes the innerworkings of characters wrestling with issues of appropriate placement, under the weight of delineating sacrificial right from self-serving wrong.
An American Marriage is a gripping story, disquieting in its tenable premise and gripping with tense urgency on every page during its search for apportioned equilibrium. It is a powerfully written, brilliantly crafted novel for the discerning reader, and a thought provoking treasure for book club discussions.
I waited a while to read this and it was worth the wait. Awesome book. Loved how the story evolved through the perspectives of various characters. I’d read it again.
Open with caution. Start reading only if you are not looking for a happily ever after kind of story. The writing is excellent and has the feel of an author who knows her way around a good contemporary story. It is a uniquely American tragedy told with the patience of Faulkner and the stylistic elegance of Baldwin. The characters are far from perfect but their redemption comes from that open and blistering acknowledgement. I loved it and felt compassion for the triangular misery of Celestial, Roy, and Andre. It is a story well-told and the author, Tayari Jones, is to be commended!
An interesting idea and quite thought-provoking. A brave comment on racialism, society and the Institute of marriage.
For the book to work, the reader has to connect with the central characters. Unfortunately, I didn’t. The only character I really liked was Big Roy and the part he played in the story.
It is well-written and I think if you do connect with the characters, you’ll love it.
I’m a British reader, and while the book is about universal terms of love, respect and marriage I found it a very American book so there was an extra hurdle for me to jump to find the characters relatable.
This is a fine novel that explores both the imprisonment of young black males and the sanctity of marriage. Told from the point of view of alternating characters, the reader experiences empathy for each character. The book is rich in dialogue, making the story appealing. I especially liked the novel because it invites readers from all ethnic groups. It gave me an opportunity to experience, as closely as possible, the daily lives of African Americans, for which I wish to thank Ms. Jones, the author.
I truly enjoyed this book because it really talks to the idea of an “american marriage” It speaks to the idea that there is no right or ideal marriage in the US. I also liked the fact that the book speaks about wrongly incarcerated men in this country.
I read the book twice. First time I was on a cruise to Alaska (Holland American) this book was chosen and discussed. I than recommended the book for my book club last month.It was informative, realistic and the characters came to life. I loved Roy Senior and the title made me understand the different meanings of love and marriage when two persons are united.
This is the story of Celestial and Roy. They are young newlyweds when they take a trip to visit Roy’s parents. Roy is mistakenly arrested for the rape of a woman, and while he is in jail, his marriage to Celestial falls apart. This is a heartbreaking story. It leads you to ask, “what is love, what is a marriage?” Beautifully written.
#AnAmerican Marriage #TayariJones
The writing in this books is so delicious, it pushed me past a few plot weaknesses. I really enjoyed being dropped into two African American families in the south, current time, and most importantly into the marriage of Celestial and Roy. The plot centers around their relationship before during and after a crucial event involving miscarriage of justice, and includes the perspective of Dre – an old friend of both of theirs. I read it quickly, caught up on the story, eager to get back to the book every time I put it down. I found some frustrations with choices the characters made, and I wasn’t 100% on the ending (but I rarely am) but I rated it five stars because the writing was so wonderful and the pace never falters. As a writer myself, I can attest how challenging that is to pull off! Great job Tayari Jones. _ Joanell Serra, Author, The Vines We Planted