A Best Book of the Year: The Washington Post • Chicago Tribune • NPR • Vogue • Elle • Real Simple • InStyle • Good Housekeeping • Parade • Slate • Vox • Kirkus Reviews • Library Journal • BookPage Longlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize An Instant New York Times BestsellerA Reese’s Book Club Pick “The most provocative page-turner of the year.” –Entertainment Weekly “I urge you to read Such a Fun … Prize
An Instant New York Times Bestseller
A Reese’s Book Club Pick
“The most provocative page-turner of the year.” –Entertainment Weekly
“I urge you to read Such a Fun Age.” —NPR
A striking and surprising debut novel from an exhilarating new voice, Such a Fun Age is a page-turning and big-hearted story about race and privilege, set around a young black babysitter, her well-intentioned employer, and a surprising connection that threatens to undo them both.
Alix Chamberlain is a woman who gets what she wants and has made a living, with her confidence-driven brand, showing other women how to do the same. So she is shocked when her babysitter, Emira Tucker, is confronted while watching the Chamberlains’ toddler one night, walking the aisles of their local high-end supermarket. The store’s security guard, seeing a young black woman out late with a white child, accuses Emira of kidnapping two-year-old Briar. A small crowd gathers, a bystander films everything, and Emira is furious and humiliated. Alix resolves to make things right.
But Emira herself is aimless, broke, and wary of Alix’s desire to help. At twenty-five, she is about to lose her health insurance and has no idea what to do with her life. When the video of Emira unearths someone from Alix’s past, both women find themselves on a crash course that will upend everything they think they know about themselves, and each other.
With empathy and piercing social commentary, Such a Fun Age explores the stickiness of transactional relationships, what it means to make someone “family,” and the complicated reality of being a grown up. It is a searing debut for our times.
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An amazing debut… A sort of modern Austen-esque take on racism and modern liberal sensibilities… except that description makes it sound far more serious and less clever than it is. [Kiley Reid] has a forensic eye.
Such a Fun Age is a startling, razor-sharp debut. Kiley Reid has written a book with no easy answers, instead, filling her story with delicious gray areas and flawed points of view. It’s both wildly fun and breathtakingly wise, deftly, and confidently confronting issues of race, class, and privilege. I have to admit, I’m in awe.
SUCH A FUN AGE is a smartly conceived and cleverly worded novel about race relations. The main characters are two women: Alix Chamberlain, who is white and wealthy, and Emira Tucker, who is black and strapped for cash. Emira, a college graduate, has never quite found her calling; to pay the rent, she is working two jobs, one as a part-time typist, the other as a baby sitter for Alix’s three-year-old daughter.
One Saturday night, Alix calls Emira in the midst of a family emergency and begs her to come take the toddler out of the house for a little while. Reluctant to leave the party she’s at with friends but wanting to help, Emira Ubers straight to the Chamberlain home, and, as Alix has asked, takes the little girl, Briar, to a local market to buy snacks that she knows the child loves. Picture it. Emira is dressed to the nines, buying fast food late on a Saturday night, holding a white child.
In a gross case of racial profiling, Emira is accused by a customer and a security guard, both white, of kidnapping the child. As the story progresses, the ramifications of this incident snake through an increasingly complex web.
This is Kiley Reid’s debut novel, and she clearly knows about what she writes. Her portrayal of Emira as a young black woman doing her best to succeed is spot-on. For that reason, I can forgive her for making Alix a stereotypically shallow Internet-influencer-wannabe. I didn’t care for Alix. I did care for Emira. I assume the author planned this.
SUCH A FUN AGE is about more than race. It’s about mothering and the love a child needs. It’s about the sway of friends. It’s about a woman who doesn’t quite meet the expectations of her family. It’s about honesty and responsibility. It’s about love and obsession. Mostly, it’s about different people seeing the world through different eyes, which brings us back to the issue of race.
One caveat. Ms. Reid tells her story almost entirely in dialogue – generally a good thing. Here, I found the repartee tiring at times – too cute, too witty, to lonnnnnng. It could have been edited.
That said, I’ll be recommending SUCH A FUN AGE to my book group. There’s a lot to think about here.
When is the aggressive liberalism of the educated, well-off white elite a strange sort of racism in itself? In this novel, Kiley Reid gives us two progressives who compete for the loyalty of a young black woman babysitter, Emira. One is her employer, Alix Chamberlain, a mother whose older daughter, Briar, Emira genuinely loves. The other, Kelley, becomes her boyfriend after he films her being accosted by a grocery store security guard accusing her of kidnapping her three year old charge. Kelley has a fraught history from high school with Alix, but none of the players are aware of this until Emira’s involvement with him is a fact. Kelley and Alix separately attempt to influence and manipulate Emira to end her relationship with the other, and the reader is led to see each as right or wrong, back and forth, by selective point of view truth revelations. What I found most impressive ultimately was the complexity of character Reid achieved, and Emira’s emerging critical thinking. There was some heavy-handed millennial jargon dialog between Emira and her opinionated roommate-friends, but overall I found the writing solid and the pacing excellent.
I enjoyed so much about this book! Not only is Reid’s writing engaging, the story she tells in Such a Fun Age is one I’m still thinking about. We need more non-white people telling their stories, and Reid delivers. I want more from her as soon as possible.
What first struck me after starting this novel is that it’s difficult to categorize. Is it women’s fiction? Literary? New adult? Reid’s cute cover is a bit deceiving of the hard-hitting story within the pages, but I appreciate that she crosses genre lines and offers a character or plot line for many types of readers.
Reid’s protagonists are Alix Chamberlain, an affluent, successful white woman and mother who runs a blog aiming to empower women, and Emira Tucker, an African American college graduate who nannies for Alix’s elder daughter, Briar, who’s three, while she tries to decide what she wants to do with her life.
One night, in a moment of panic, Alix asks Emira to get Briar out of the townhouse while she and her husband deal with a situation (*spoiler alert* we learn later that Alix’s husband, who is a newscaster, made a racist remark on the news and their home has been egged as a result). Emira shows up after a night out, having had a few drinks and wearing a tight dress, and takes Briar to the store, where the security guard questions her association with the child and generally harasses her. She’s aided by a man who takes a video of the interaction — whom she later begins to date (*spoiler alert* and who dated Alix in high school only to break up with her rather dramatically).
What ensues is a thought-provoking, necessary story about white privilege, classism, racism, white savior complex, deception, and trust. The third-person omniscient point of view shifts between Emira and Alex, and Reid paints both characters incredibly well. At various points in the story, my empathy shifted between the two, and the complexity of both characters’ thoughts and actions are ripe for discussion.
Wow. What a voice. What a great character in Emira Tucker. Well plotted, layered, nuanced. Compulsively readable — I stayed up way too late turning the pages of this one! Can’t wait for Kiley Reid’s next book.
This socially relevant book conveys important messages about the unspoken dynamics in race relations. An exceptional debut, for sure. It made me think a lot about my own role in society and brought new awareness to me in terms of my relationships with others.
I just absolutely loved this book. It’s so ripe for discussion it’s beyond my abilities to capture it all in a review, but I definitely recommending reading!
As the adoptive mother of a child of color this was a much more emotional read for me than I generally care for in my fiction. However, once I began I couldn’t put it down, even as it wrecked me.
When a security guard at a grocery store assumes a young black woman who’s babysitting is instead kidnapping the white child in her charge? Well, the world goes nuts.
When the toddler’s woke mom gets involved and tries to make it right? Yeah…
This is great story-telling that feels a teeny bit like a story, anecdote or joke that hits way too close to home.
I flip-flopped between having the emotional distance to get into the story and dying a little inside imagining this being my daughter.
There’s a lot of hype around this book which can set expectations high.
Emira, a young black woman is a regular babysitter for Briar, a white three-year-old girl whose mother Alix is an affluent white woman. Briar is a talkative and highly inquisitive child with a nervous disposition. Late one night, Alix calls Emira to take Briar out while the police come by to investigate a broken window. Emira thinks about the money she needs and she leaves a party to come and look after the child. (As an aside, why a three-year-old is not already in bed fast asleep pops into my mind but the nature of this child is explored to kind of explain it.)
Emira takes Briar to a grocery story because the child loves to look at nuts. A security guard watches them and asks Emira has a young white child. Kelley, a white man happens to film the ensuing altercation. This event has reverberations for Emira, Alix, Kelley and poor little Briar.
It is hard to say a lot without giving away spoilers. The underlying issues around race and privilege are central themes as is women’s relationships with each other and the pressure women can place on themselves and on their friends.
Alix is a do-gooder and is genuinely horrified by what happened to Emira at the grocery store. Besides throwing money at her and support to take it further, Alix decides that she really needs Emira not just for babysitting, but as a friend and part of her family. Alix wants to get close, to know her to the point of stalking her babysitter’s texts.
“Alix often felt that Emira saw her as a textbook rich white person… but if Emira would only take a deeper look… Alix fantasized about Emira discovering things about her that shaped what Alix saw as the truest version of herself. Like the fact that one of Alix’s friends was also black. That Alix’s new and favourite shoes were from Payless, and only cost eighteen dollars.”
I had little sympathy for Alix who was completely needy, turning to her girlfriends for advice over the most ridiculous things. Her well-drawn character produced a range of emotions for me. Emira on the other hand just wants to do a job which pays her enough to qualify for health insurance. Well- educated, she is without ambition, continuously doubting herself. She compares herself to her girlfriends and their own various successes and they don’t quite understand Emira who’s highlight of the week is to be with Briar who adores her. Alix’s girlfriends are the same. And the relationships are very well handled.
“Sometimes, when she was particularly broke, Emira convinced herself that if she had a real job, a nine-to-five position with benefits and decent pay, then the rest of her life would start to resemble adulthood as well.”
It took a while for me to get into the first half of the book, getting to know characters I didn’t much like. The second half was dynamite with a sinister twist creating a great deal of anxiety about Emira, cheering for her and hoping her response would produce a positive outcome.
Despite the hype, it’s a quick, easy read and worth checking out.
I loved the writing and felt like I knew these young women because the dialogue and internal voices were pitch perfect. This book is an excellent conversation starter on contemporary race relations in the U.S. and I strongly recommend it as a way to talk about the thing that scares us most – ourselves. Excellent work! I will be looking for more well-crafted stories from Kiley Reid in the future!
Reid’s book on race and class takes a fresh approach to these important and timely topics. Book clubs will enjoy discussing the ensemble cast, their words, their actions, and the societal norms and expectations that underlie it all.
Believe the hype, the Instagram saturation, the Reese Witherspoon endorsement: SUCH A FUN AGE is a brilliant look at (among many other things) liberal racism and transactional relationships. The story begins when Emira, a twenty-five-year-old black woman, is accused by a grocery store employee of having kidnapped a three-year-old white girl she’s babysitting, and from there, we follow the perspectives of both Emira and Alix, the mother of the three-year-old. As the two women navigate the aftermath of the grocery store experience, which was caught on video, their lives become more connected than either of them would have guessed, with results that will push both of them to their limits and unearth either the best or the worst in them. First off, I have to give it up to Nicole Lewis, the audiobook narrator. She brought so much personality to each character, from Emira’s take-charge friend Zara to three-year-old Briar, and she helped make the story one that was impossible to pause. But in terms of the book itself, it’s one you’ll want to talk about as soon as you finish it. There are so many layers to these characters, and Kiley Reid does an excellent job of keeping us empathetic toward both of the main protagonists, until one of them shows their true colors at the end. Among many other compelling subjects and themes within this book, the story delves deep into liberals’ anxieties over appearing racist, and for me, the driving core of two of the main white characters was summed up in a line in which Alix wonders how she got wrapped up in “a losing game called ‘Which One of Us Is Actually More Racist?’” This book also takes a stab at woke culture, illuminating how condescending and problematic it can actually be. Emira is just trying to make money, hang out with the three-year-old she genuinely loves to babysit, and figure out her next steps in life—but the white characters around her have their own agendas for her that cause them to treat her more as a concept than a person. SUCH A FUN AGE is truly a conversation-starter—nuanced, riveting, and a damn good story.
The first time in a long time that I had a novel glued to my hands for two days… Such a Fun Age is so witty, so touching and humane. Just utterly phenomenal.
Such a Fun Age has a deceptively simple premise: Alix, the successful mom who has life by the tail, leans heavily, too heavily, on Emira, her twenty-five-year-old black babysitter. Emira is figuring out her future, and she’s mostly fine with that, especially since she’s enchanted with Alix’s toddler. The premise, and the breezy style, belie the story’s serious themes of identity, race, privilege, and motherhood. Now it sounds heavy, right? On one level, it is; there’s a lot to chew on. But Reid’s genius is that the story is also fast-paced, warm-hearted, and touching, and her energetic use of voice is what makes this novel fly. Brava!
If reading books that sometimes make you cringe with self-awareness are your jam, do NOT miss this book. I felt every feel I was supposed to and then some. But the book is so well written, it was eye-opening rather than off-putting. Well placed humor as well as honest self-assessments by both women make this book a do not miss.
This book was fascinating; I’ve never read anything quite like it (though I normally read rom coms and mysteries, so there’s that). It centers on Emira, an African American babaysitter for Alix’s daughter, Briar. In an emergency, Emira takes Briar to the grocery store, only to be accused of kidnapping her by the security guard. While this plot point is certainly the thread that carries the book, there’s so many more elements, emotions, and relationships that give it depth. The writing is sharp and creates a world and characters that are both so real and unreal all at once. It’s vivid—you can practically SEE everything happening. And without spoiling anything, I found the ending perhaps surprisingly satisfying. Definitely worth a read.
Loved this book. Kiley Reid has such a subtle touch when it does to writing about issues like racism. Her heroine, Emira, is relatable and easy to root for, and her antagonist, Alix, is complex and sympathetic. I’m glad I picked up this book.
This is an amazing book that pinpoints the assumptions and perceived meanings behind issues of race, class, and ambitions as well as the white lies people tell when they think they’ll never be caught. This book had my husband and I talking about our own experiences which I think is the ultimate testament to a great book. As much as we like to think our inherent bias is in check since we both grew up in a lower-class neighborhood with a wide mix of races as our friends and neighbors we still have room to improve. To speak out and to make real change. Instead of just empathizing we need to do something so moments like the grocery store scene that opens this book do not happen.
This book was a little slow and at times but it had us laughing out loud. Kiley Reid has a talent for capturing and describing people with humor that is sharp and vivid. The inner thoughts of Alix wondering if Emira allowed her boyfriend to touch her hair or Emira describing her new white boyfriend’s apartment like unscented laundry detergent, she pinpoints those differences that we may not even notice on the surface and she sucks you into the world she’s created.
I loved the way the women in their 20s were described and portrayed as a little loud, a little messy, but very loving of one another. It felt real and unguarded. There are also great examples of the way white people tend to treat black women like a possession or asset. For instance, the white man who only dates black women or Alix who desperately needed Emira’s approval and felt entittled to look at her phone or ask personal questions simply because she was an employee. These are tricky situations that the young woman didn’t want to navigate through but did so with grace and self-respect. I loved this book so much.
Virtual book clubs will gobble this one up! There is so much to unpack in this story following Alix and Emira as they both navigate growing up (one a twenty something, one a tired mom) in their own way, confronting social norms, love, racism and the tricky business of mixing business and family. Highly recommend!