Such a Fun Age

This was a fun book to read, full of social commentary and wisdom from a group of young women who are seeking their place in society and in their lives. Emira is the babysitter for Alix Chamberlain. Alix sees herself as a mover and a shaker, a woman who is showing other women how to get what they want out of life. Emira is a young black woman, about to turn twenty-six and lose her insurance, kind of a rudderless boat in an ocean, lost but not really knowing that she is lost. She enjoys taking care of Briar while Alix goes everywhere with baby Catherine. But Emira receives a huge wake up call when she is accused of kidnapping Briar when she goes to a yuppie market as a favor to Alix, way after her normal hours, plus she was called away from a friend’s birthday party. The language between Emira and her friends was coarse, and since I am not a part of that culture, I found it hard to understand sometimes, although it did not really distract me from reading the book. The story itself was a good one and one that needs to be told in a society that judges people for their appearance and later find out that their first impression was totally off the mark. Emira is a character who needs a happy ending and seeks to find one with a man she meets at that market that night, Kelley Copeland. She has no idea that Alix and Kelley have a history, one that has enraged Alix for two decades. The thanksgiving scene when the two of them see each other again was so well-written that it was like I was a guest at the table, too. In fact, the whole book had a well-developed plot, with a few unexpected twists and characters who were believable if not totally likable. I really enjoyed how the author tied everything up neatly with a bow at the end, although I did think that the ending was a little rushed and the last chapter seemed to be an epilogue with lots of loose ends coming together. For a debut novel though, this was definitely worth reading and highly enjoyable! It let me see a facet of society that I would not normally see from a viewpoint that I do not regularly enjoy. Fans of contemporary fiction will need to run, not walk, to their local bookstores to get a copy of this one!
Disclaimer
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255, “Guides Concerning the Use of Testimonials and Endorsements in Advertising.”

Kiley Reid’s debut novel Such a Fun Age offers an original and unique perspective on race and class through a page-turning story that is deceptively entertaining.

The setting was familiar–Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Square and Kensington. My husband once worked at the corner of Rittenhouse Square and we spent 1980 living in Kensington. The two neighborhoods could not have been more different. The historic Rittenhouse Square and the upscale shops around it, ethereal sounds of music wafting from the Curtis Institute of Music; and Kensington with its empty factories and yardless rowhouses built to house textile factory workers. Money and privilege and the working poor. After we left, Kensington declined even more.

Reid’s character Emira has graduated from my Alma Mater, Temple University, with a B.A. in English–as I did. I often proudly said that I held a degree that prepared me to read intelligently while impoverished. Emira has other complications: she has no idea what she wants to do in life and she is African American.

My first job out of Temple was working Christmas Rush at Strawbridge & Clothier’s downtown; my second job was customer service at a Bala Cynwyd insurance company. Emira is a part-time typist for the Green Party and takes a part-time job as a babysitter. She shares an apartment in Kensington and hangs with her friends, wishing she had more disposable money like they do. Emira will soon be 26 and the impending loss of her parent’s health insurance looms over her head. She needs a ‘real job’.

The woman who hires Emira to babysit is Alix Chamberlain who has built a career as an influencer, married an older, well-off television newsperson, and has two children. She carries the heartache of her first love with Kelly, who dumped her just before prom over a misunderstanding and her ill-formed decision that proved disastrous for Kelly’s African American buddy.

Emira has great affection for Alix’s child. And, she badly needs the babysitting money. So when she gets a call for an emergency late-night sitting job she leaves her friend’s birthday party at a bar. Dressed inappropriately, with a few drinks under the belt, hanging with a white child, Emira strikes the security guard as suspicious and she is nearly arrested. A white man records the incident and encourages Emira to prosecute. She isn’t interested. But when they met up again later, they become involved personally. That man is Kelley.

Meantime, the incident causes Alix to take a closer look at her babysitter. She becomes emotionally attached to Emira, losing the boundary between the professional and the personal. This escalates to the point that Alix interferes with Emira’s personal life with disastrous results for everyone. Except for Emira; she comes out the better, finally finding herself.

The interactions between races depicted in the novel were startling to me, first because I had not encountered them before in fiction, and secondly because they felt very true.

Do we white people really understand the implications of our behavior when we try to help, endeavor to show we are not prejudiced, are color blind or woke? Do people with comfortable lives really know what those who are struggling want from us? I mean, Alix sends leftovers and wine home with Emira! Is that helpful when what she really needs is health insurance?

Such a Fun Age reads like popular women’s fiction but hits on important and relevant issues. It would be a great book club read.

I won a free book on Goodreads. My review is fair and unbiased.

Such A Fun Age was an interesting read. There’s a lot packed into this book — coming of age, friendships, family relationships as well as race and privilege.

I was expecting an insightful look at these topics in the same vein as The Hate U Give. However, for me, this book was a disappointment. The characters were underdeveloped and stereotypical; the dialogue was horrible — often stilted even though it was intended to be conversational and in some case just plain unrealistic. Everyone’s motivations are questionable. So, instead of rooting for any of these characters, I found myself turned off by all of them.

It was a great premise that was poorly executed. Maybe my expectations were too high for this debut book.

Great writing and captivating story. I liked the characters and the conflict created as well as how each one was depicted. In part, they are reliable and interesting persons that like in real life, sometimes, at twenty-something years old you still don’t know what to do with your life and other people may want to help or maybe just pretend like helping because that’s the vibe I’ve got from the book.
I can easily see why it’s a must-read that many people will enjoy.

Kiley Reid has written a timely novel that asks what we owe to those we care for in this complicated world. With intimate, touching observations, Reid details the lives of two complicated, loving women who are trying to figure out how to live their best lives in a world that does not always make space for them to do so.

Gripping, substantive, complicated, compelling, and just plain true… These characters laid claim to me, and their stories became important to me in the way art does that to its readers, viewers, listeners… Such a fantastic, serious, and, I should say, fun read.

On one hand, this is a quick and easy read. The events are engaging and dramatic and the story moves along quickly. But beneath the surface, there is a lot to unpack and examine in this novel. The main character, Emira, is a twenty-five year old black woman who has worked as babysitter since graduating college. At the beginning of the novel, Emira takes the three year old she watches to the grocery store and is accused of kidnapping the child by a hostile security guard. Emira’s relationship with her white boyfriend, Kelley, and with her employer, Alix, are also defined by her skin color. Her whole world revolves around people’s assumptions of her worth, intelligence, and potential, based solely on the color of her skin. Such a Fun Age explores how Emira learns to turn the tables and take her life into her own hands. I enjoyed the story and appreciated the way it spurred me to think about the assumptions I make about people before I’ve gotten to know them. A truly worthwhile read to end the year.

This is one of those books that’s hard to review because I think if read quickly it would come across as just a good story. Reading this more slowly it’s revealed that there is much more to this book than just entertainment. It highlights lots of racial issues, from two different points of view. Emira is a successful, married white woman and Emira an “undecided” African-American woman. Emira discovered her talents quite quickly and has a thriving online business as well as lots of speaking engagements.She and her husband now have what seems to be “the good life”. She has one amazing, open hearted and apparently open mouthed (in jest here) little 3 year old daughter. She plays an important part in this novel, her name is Briar.

Enter our other main character Emira, a 25 y/o African American, college educated young women who hasn’t figured out what she wants to do with her life. To some she would appear in need of a helping hand, mentorship or whatever. In truth, however, Emira isn’t overly upset about where she is in her life, she is giving herself permission to explore different ideas and career paths.

These two women start out in the book as “boss” and “babysitter”, but Alix’s feelings for this young woman go much deeper and sometimes in a questionable way.

Here’s a good little taste of what’s to come, the big “event” that changes the trajectory of the relationship between these two women. “So she is shocked when her babysitter, Emira Tucker, is confronted while watching the Chamberlains’ toddler one night. Seeing a young black woman out late with a white child, a security guard at their local high-end supermarket 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 it right.”

Into this mix of emotions and presumptions between both Alix and Emira we add Kelley Copeland, the boy who “ruined Alix’s senior year in high school” presumably circulating a letter she had written and involving a young man who had his scholarship taken away because Alix called the police when he was found on her parent’s property. Alix has never really gotten over Kelley and now he shows up in the most awkward position possible.

Sometimes I think that racial relationships have gotten better in the last decade but then I read a book like this and it really makes me wonder, have we really made much progress understanding each other and our differences? Are we still trying to make everyone act like white people? I had never heard the term white “saviorism” before but it was an interesting topic to contemplate. In this book I felt that both women used each other in different ways, neither was guilt free in the outcome of their story.

I received an ARC of this novel from the publisher through Edelweiss. The novel is set to publish in January 2020.