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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Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid is a well written novel about serious issues dealing with privilege and race. Without giving away any spoilers, there were times as I read this book that I was shocked and horrified at what was happening and I realized these things do go on in our society and it made me so sad. The author is to be commended for writing such a powerful, moving story. Thank you to Kiley Reid and Penguin Random House for sending me a copy of this book. These opinions are solely are my own and I rated it a five.
Where did that title come from? What does it have to do with anything? I passed this book over a few times because it turned me off and didn’t seem related to the synopsis. But then this book was selected for my newest book club. So I borrowed it from the library.
I didn’t like any of the white characters, I felt they got what they deserved. And I had no frame of reference for the immature Black girls who are younger than my own daughter. The two “crises” points of the story: the supermarket scene and the aborted party 16 years in the past, really should have had more detail and emphasis … more consequences.
This book was just “ok”.
I thought it was a really excellent book right up until the ending, which completely undercut the characters, the conflict, and their motivations. I feel like the story in the first 3/4 of the book was so nuanced and the last 1/4 not only ‘undid’ some main characters’ motivations, but wrapped things up too nicely.
This book is interesting, but it plays a great deal on stereotypes. It seems typical of young people today who do not want to make a decision. Decisions and ideas can always change. Few people stay on one path their entire lives.
not worth the hype. Geared toward young adult.
Overall I dont have much to say about this book. I ended up speed reading the last 100 pages to just finish it. She does attempt to show everyone’s perspective of a very specific incident which i liked. However I never felt attached to any of the characters and there’s not much of a writing style. But I did want to know how it ended and it was a cohesive plot.
This is kind of first read of 2021 for me and it has been really good one. It involves alot concepts but on superficial level one can easily understand that the major focus is on racism but many other concepts can be understood by the understanding of the reader. It definitely has some jaw-dropping moments though being a cozy paced read.
Such A Fun Age is funny, thought provoking and a page turner. I enjoyed every word of this book and made me feel things I didn’t expect from a book.
A fun, easy read about an affluent white woman and her young African-American babysitter. There were some pretty funny moments, but the story also tackled serious issues such as race relations, white privilege and of course racism. I felt the story ended quite abruptly (“did I miss a page?”), but perhaps it was because I wasn’t ready to say goodbye.
Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid is a good read with some flaws. I wish the relationship between Emira and Briar could have been developed before plunging us into media res. I didn’t know who to cheer for with the opening scene. I couldn’t tell whether or not to have sympathy for Emira. Was Kelley a good guy or someone to avoid?
My favorite character was Briar, even though she deserves a better name.
There were a few places where the writing was uneven, or sloppy. Several scenes could have been written to be believable. I can’t be specific because of giving away some plot points.
The ending scenes were extremely disappointing, a major twist where the whole perspective shifts that betrays what readers were led to believe.
I recommend this book as an interesting read, but only if reasonably priced.
It was good enough that I finished it, but it certainly isn’t a literary masterpiece.
I found myself easily engrossed in this book at times – it has the gripping pull of a thriller, which is perhaps enough to tell you how much this book packs a punch with it’s commentary on racism, but speaks also to Kiley Reid’s skill in telling a compelling and unrelenting story. Alix seemed untrustworthy and unstable, which made for a delightfully unreliable narrator, and I adored Emira and Briar’s relationship. While this book was incredibly relevant in so many ways and had a strong enough current to keep me reading, something about it just didn’t ring true to me in the end. I found I couldn’t relate well to either Alix or Emira – neither character felt truly developed, with incredibly surface-level emotions about complex topics, and I struggled to develop true empathy for either. I found myself constantly annoyed at the interactions Emira had with her friends that screamed textbook millennial (and we’re the same age) and at the expected drama of the stereotypical former-workaholic driven crazy by being domestic. I also found myself distracted by the fact that although the book came out in 2019, it’s set in late 2015, in the heyday of Clinton’s campaign. It was often hard to take myself out of the incredible moments of conflict we are living through right now and settle in to what a conversation about race might have looked like a few years ago.
Powerful and moving!
Although I really did not “like” either of the main characters — Alix was very superficial and self-serving and Emira was shallow — could have had more depth, IMHO. I did think the book had a unique quality about it that held my interest. The ending fell a bit flat for me but overall a good read
(Some spoilers on character, but not plot points, ahead). This was one of my top “2020 To Read” books, thanks to enthusiastic recommendations from friends and media critics. The book started off slow for me (although I was surprised and impressed by the author’s decision to put a major event at the very beginning instead of as a later climax) but had me speed-reading midway through to find out the fates of the three main characters.
The book is putatively about an older white female millennial (Alix) fascinated by her younger black female babysitter (Emira), and the transformation of that interest into an obsession as they find themselves connected further by a third party, beyond their childcare arrangement. The novel is a satirical take on “white wokeness” seen at its peak in 2015 ahead of the US elections. The writing is funny and sharp. I had many laugh out loud moments at the hapless Alix, but ultimately tired of how she and the other Caucasian protagonist were portrayed by the end. It’s one thing to write in a satirical manner, another to depict a lead as a vacuous caricature of the worst of their race. It felt like lazy writing on Reid’s part to make someone who generated reader sympathy during the story, devolve into a mess. The ending was also so abrupt, I thought I had some pages or an epilogue missing.
So this book gets 3 stars from me, rounded down from 3.5, even though I had been pretty sure it would be a 4 or 5 – star read at the outset.
A 25 year old black woman is accused of kidnapping the white toddler that she is babysitting for while visiting a grocery store in an upscale neighborhood late one night. Someone videos the encounter between the young woman and the security guard who oversteps. The young woman knows that the video will only complicate her life if it is revealed and she convinces the man not to post it on social media. The mother of the child wants to make things right, but her past and her present add to her inability to see what is right. Paths cross and cross again as people try to navigate their relationships with themselves, each other, and the past. The author captured the mind, mannerisms, and speech of a 3 year old child as well as the other diverse characters.
Emira feels like she is behind her friends in “adulting.” After graduating from college she has struggled to figure out what she wants to be when she grows up. She is about to be forced off her family’s health insurance when she turns 26, works part time as typist for the Green Party and part time as a babysitter for a Philadelphia family. The family is infant Catherine, almost 3 year old Briar, father, Peter Chamberlin a Philly TV personality, and Alix, the mother/wife/women’s advocate/ soon to be book author/ wannabe Hillary Clinton Campaign worker. Emira babysits for Briar so that Alix can work on a book of letters that have helped her open doors and help others open doors. Late one night, after Peter said something insensitive on air, a rock is thrown through their window. Alix calls on Emira to take Briar out of the house so she wont be scared while the police are called. Emira warned her that she was not dressed like a babysitter but like a 25 year old at a birthday party on a weekend night. While they walk the isles of a nearby grocery store that Briar loves, a “well-meaning” woman alerts the security guard that a young black woman is in the store near midnight with a white toddler. While Emira tries to protect herself from accusations of kidnapping Briar a young white man records the racist event on his cell phone. She convinces the man that she doesn’t want the video to go viral because it would only make her life more difficult. Paths cross and cross again as people try to navigate their relationships with themselves, each other, and the past.
This book was filled with interesting characters who came to life on the page. Kiley Reid is as good with bringing a 3 year old to life as a floundering 25 year old black woman, a 30 something self obsessed white woman. The book was funny, serious, thought provoking, and uplifting. The audio book was narrated beautifully. I had wanted a bit more vengeance or at least self realization for the invasion of privacy and self entitlement that occurred but, thinking about it between the time I finished the book and typing this review, I realized that sometimes that didn’t happen in real life. That made me like the book even more. The restraint at not coming up with a happy ending, or justice, or awareness, or tying things up with a big red bow, must have been difficult, but it was perfect.
Very modern take on race, class and technology
Thought provoking
I enjoyed this book and it’s a very fast read. I think I thought it was going to be even more about Emira’s issues with the grocer which I thought was very interesting. I was not as big a fan in Alix’s backstory as I was in Emira’s. The characters, though did seem very realistic and I cared about them and how their lives were going to change.
If you’re considering a book for an Anti-racist group, IMHO, I think Such a Fun Age is perfect, and here’s why …
1. It has female characters that are easily relatable.
2. It had a lot of good examples of White Fragility. I find that White Fragility can be like passive-aggressive behavior. It’s hard to identify and call out, but I feel that this book does an excellent job of displaying micro-aggressions in an easily identifiable manner.
3. There were lots of angles to come at this for discussion.