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AN AMERICAN MARRIAGE

by Tayari Jones ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 6, 2018

Subtle, well-crafted, and powerful.

A look at the personal toll of the criminal justice system from the author of Silver Sparrow (2011) and The Untelling (2005).

Roy has done everything right. Growing up in a working-class family in Louisiana, he took advantage of all the help he could get and earned a scholarship to Morehouse College. By the time he marries Spelman alum Celestial, she’s an up-and-coming artist. After a year of marriage, they’re thinking about buying a bigger house and starting a family. Then, on a visit back home, Roy is arrested for a crime he did not commit. Jones begins with chapters written from the points of view of her main characters. When Roy goes to prison, it becomes a novel in letters. The epistolary style makes perfect sense. Roy is incarcerated in Louisiana, Celestial is in Atlanta, and Jones’ formal choice underscores their separation. Once Roy is released, the narrative resumes a rotating first person, but there’s a new voice, that of Andre, once Celestial’s best friend and now something more. This novel is peopled by vividly realized, individual characters and driven by interpersonal drama, but it is also very much about being black in contemporary America. Roy is arrested, tried, convicted, and imprisoned in Louisiana, the state with the highest per-capita rate of incarceration in the United States, and where the ratio of black to white prisoners is 4 to 1. There’s a heartbreaking scene in which Celestial’s uncle—Roy’s attorney—encourages her to forget everything she knows about presenting herself while she speaks in her husband’s defense. “Now is not the time to be articulate. Now is the time to give it up. No filter, all heart.” After a lifetime of being encouraged to be “well spoken,” Celestial finds that she sounds false trying to speak unguardedly. “As I took my seat…not even the black lady juror would look at me.” This is, at its heart, a love story, but a love story warped by racial injustice. And, in it, Jones suggests that racial injustice haunts the African-American story.

Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2018

ISBN: 978-1-61620-134-0

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Algonquin

Review Posted Online: Nov. 11, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017

FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP

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SEEN & HEARD

THE PERFECT COUPLE

by Elin Hilderbrand ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 19, 2018

Sink into this book like a hot, scented bath...a delicious, relaxing pleasure. And a clever whodunit at the same time.

A wedding on Nantucket is canceled when the bride finds her maid of honor floating facedown in the Atlantic on the morning of the big day.

One of the supporting characters in Hilderbrand's ( Winter Solstice , 2017, etc.) 21st Nantucket novel is Greer Garrison, the mother of the groom and a well-known novelist. Unfortunately, in addition to all the other hell about to break loose in Greer's life, she's gone off her game. Early in the book, a disappointed reader wonders if "the esteemed mystery writer, who is always named in the same breath as Sue Grafton and Louise Penny, is coasting now, in her middle age." In fact, Greer's latest manuscript is about to be rejected and sent back for a complete rewrite, with a deadline of two weeks. But wanna know who's most definitely not coasting? Elin Hilderbrand. Readers can open her latest with complete confidence that it will deliver everything we expect: terrific clothes and food, smart humor, fun plot, Nantucket atmosphere, connections to the characters of preceding novels, and warmth in relationships evoked so beautifully it gets you right there. Example: a tiny moment between the chief of police and his wife. It's very late in the book, and he still hasn't figured out what the hell happened to poor Merritt Monaco, the Instagram influencer and publicist for the Wildlife Conservation Society. Even though it's dinner time, he has to leave the "cold blue cans of Cisco beer in his fridge” and get back to work. " ‘I hate murder investigations,’ [his wife] says, lifting her face for a kiss. ‘But I love you.’ " You will feel that just as powerfully as you believe that Celeste Otis, the bride-to-be, would rather be anywhere on Earth than on the beautiful isle of Nantucket, marrying the handsome, kind, and utterly smitten Benji Winbury. In fact, she had a fully packed bag with her at the crack of dawn when she found her best friend's body.

Pub Date: June 19, 2018

ISBN: 978-0-316-37526-9

Page Count: 464

Publisher: Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: April 15, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2018

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by Elin Hilderbrand

BOOK TO SCREEN

THE NIGHTINGALE

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 3, 2015

Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.

Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.

In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring  passeurs : people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the  Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.

Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3

Page Count: 448

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014

HISTORICAL FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP

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The Epistolary Heart of An American Marriage

Tayari Jones’s latest novel uses intimate methods of storytelling to depict the dissolution of a relationship.

Reading someone else’s private letters feels almost as intrusive as spying on them through their living-room window. The personalized salutation, the handwriting quirks, and the inside jokes sprinkled throughout offer a glimpse at an interior world only the recipient is meant to see. There is no performance, no act put on for third-party observers. And while perusing just one letter between two people provides hints into their relationship, digging into a whole trove of letters sent over the course of several years can reveal intricacies that face-to-face interaction with the authors never would.

It is this sort of intimacy that Tayari Jones so searchingly explores in her new novel, An American Marriage , which follows the wrongful imprisonment of a young black man named Roy, and its impact on him and on his new wife Celestial. Jones shifts from the first-person narration provided by these two protagonists to letters they send each other while Roy is in prison. She then returns to their firsthand accounts, adding in a third narrator — Andre, a childhood friend of Celestial’s and a college friend of Roy’s. The variation in these perspectives serves an important purpose: It offers up myriad means of understanding the novel’s complicated central relationship, and lets every character speak for themselves, giving each an opportunity to capture the reader’s allegiance.

Roy and Celestial have been married for a little more than a year when they’re introduced, and they’re madly in love, with a fire “still burning blue hot.” The couple is about to travel from their home in Atlanta (also Jones’s hometown, and the city in which she has grounded her three previous novels) to visit Roy’s parents in the fictional town of Eloe, Louisiana. It’s clear from the outset, with Roy and Celestial’s narration carrying the benefit of hindsight, that this trip will be the start of the pair’s troubles. To Roy , reflecting on the day of their departure, Celestial’s attempt to get them to stay behind and cancel the trip is “like watching a horror flick … When a spectral voice says, GET OUT, you should do it.” But, of course, Roy and Celestial don’t do it. They drive to Eloe, where they’ve decided to stay in a hotel rather than with Roy’s family, and where, ultimately, Roy is falsely accused of rape, subsequently arrested, tried in court, and sentenced to 12 years in prison.

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This moment and those both immediately preceding and following it are relayed, in separate chapters, by Roy and Celestial, who feel a raft of emotions: There’s the confusion Roy feels about how this could have happened in the first place; the utter fear Celestial feels as the police storm their room and drag them into the parking lot; and the complete sense of loss both of them experience in the aftermath. (“Our house isn’t simply empty , our home has been emptied ,” Celestial writes to Roy in her first letter to him in prison.) But rather than dwell on the moral implications of this violent and false imprisonment of a black man, Jones almost speeds through it; specifics of the arrest and the trial are provided in a matter of paragraphs. The terseness doesn’t make these details any less affecting, but does suggest them as essential context for the dissolving marriage at the novel’s core. Jones’s exploration is a breathtaking look at who and what can be complicit in that breakdown.

Marriages, of course—and the anxieties that abound within them—have been fodder for fiction for years. As Adelle Waldman wrote in 2013 about Jeffrey Eugenides’s aptly named The Marriage Plot , “As long as marriage and love and relationships have high stakes for us emotionally, they have the potential to offer rich subject material for novelists.” In recent months, books that range from memoir to “adultery narratives” have taken on the idea of troubled partnerships and how to deal with them, making it one of the more abundant themes in literature at this moment. With An American Marriage , Jones joins this conversation in a quietly powerful way. Her writing illuminates the bits and pieces of a marriage: those almost imperceptible moments that make it, break it, and forcefully tear it apart. Touching on familiar marital aspects ( infidelity, stasis, competition), Jones suggests that it is the amalgamation of these things, not any particular isolated instance, that can indelibly fracture a relationship.

Jones’s strongest work in An American Marriage is in the missives she crafts between Celestial and Roy while he’s imprisoned. Though they make up less than a quarter of the novel, the letters nonetheless serve as the spine of this crumbling partnership. Everything the reader could want to know about the couple is laid out in these accounts. The sheer volume of backstory provided here amounts to literary whiplash: Old family secrets and integral plot developments are presented in a single sentence and not even fully digested by the reader until several more pages have gone by. It becomes head-spinning how Jones upends all expectations, flipping the reader’s perceptions and offering unexpected moments of clarity.

These letters mark the swift progression of time and house details that nudge the story forward, but perhaps most importantly they offer a snapshot of Celestial and Roy’s changing feelings, expressed directly to each other. At the outset, both are hopeful about the future and are trying hard to keep things as they were. Roy refers to his writings as “love letters”; Celestial writes down, word for word, their last conversation before his arrest so that “we can pick up where we left off.” But these affectionate remarks dwindle over time, and their bond begins to fray. It becomes unclear where the relationship stands—“Your husband (I think),” Roy signs one of his later letters—as his time in prison drags on. Without the need to perform their relationship to others, the truth of their fading affection becomes evident in their words. There is no need to hold back, and the animosity they begin to feel toward one another (for not visiting, for not writing, for simply not being what the other person wants or needs) is palpable. Their troubles lodge themselves in the reader’s mind, but it’s impossible to choose sides.

By the end of the epistolary section, Roy is released from prison seven years short of his original 12-year sentence. “I am coming home,” he writes to Celestial, but he fails to realize that home is a malleable concept, not a fixed place. The home he knew five years ago is basically nonexistent, no matter how hard he may try to will it back into existence. For the past three years, Celestial has been “playing house” with Andre, their old friend, and the second half of the novel sees her navigating the different lives she has been living with these two men. This latter section is dynamic, with conflicts coming to a head and silent tensions finally boiling over. The present collides with the past, as Celestial, Roy, and Andre all attempt to find harmony between the two—a seemingly insurmountable task for all of them. They’re trying to move past the pain and to locate that earlier intimacy—of newlywed bliss, childhood friendship, and those first letters—but they all have different ideas of where to find it.

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Tayari Jones on ‘An American Marriage’

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In The New York Times Book Review, Stephanie Powell Watts reviews Tayari Jones’s new novel, “An American Marriage.” Watts writes:

Roy, a young black man, is tried and wrongly convicted of rape while his wife, Celestial, waits for his return. But Jones’s story isn’t the one we are expecting, a courtroom drama or an examination of the prison-industrial complex; instead, it is a clear vision of the quiet devastation of a family. The novel focuses on the failed hopes of romantic love, disapproving in-laws, flawed families of origin, and the question of life with or without children that all married couples must negotiate. It is beautifully written, with many allusions to black music and culture — including the everyday poetry of the African-American community that begs to be heard.

On this week’s podcast, Jones talks about “An American Marriage”; J. Randy Taraborrelli discusses “Jackie, Janet & Lee: The Secret Lives of Janet Auchincloss and Her Daughters, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Lee Radziwill” ; Alexandra Alter has news from the publishing world; and Gal Beckerman, Emily Eakin, Tina Jordan and John Williams on what people are reading. Pamela Paul is the host.

Here are the books mentioned in this week’s “What We’re Reading”:

“Mrs.” by Caitlin Macy

“A Horse Walks Into a Bar” by David Grossman

“Washington Square” by Henry James

“Portrait of a Novel” by Michael Gorra

“Mrs. Osmond” by John Banville

We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review’s podcast in general. You can send them to [email protected] .

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BookBrowse Reviews An American Marriage by Tayari Jones

Summary  |  Excerpt  |  Reading Guide  |  Discuss  |  Reviews  |  Beyond the book  |  Read-Alikes  |  Genres & Themes  |  Author Bio

An American Marriage

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• First Published:
• Feb 6, 2018, 320 pages
• Mar 2019, 320 pages

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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.

Celestial Davenport and Roy Othaniel Hamilton were still navigating the contours of their new marriage one year in, and you could argue that the fault lines were already beginning to show. But Roy thought differently. "I believed that our marriage was a fine-spun tapestry, fragile but fixable. We tore it often and mended it again, always with a silken thread, lovely but sure to give way again." Celestial and Roy, graduates of historically black schools, are an upwardly mobile Atlanta couple, and at the novel's outset their lives lie ahead sparkling with promise. "We are not your garden-variety bush Atlanta Negroes where the husband goes to bed with his laptop under his pillow and the wife dreams about her blue box jewelry," Roy reminds us. "I was young, hungry, and on the come-up. Celestial was an artist, intense and gorgeous." It is against this landscape that life throws the couple a curveball. At a routine stay at a motel in Roy's native Louisiana, a white woman, mistaking one black face for another, accuses Roy of rape. And just like that, the marriage is put on hold. Roy gets twelve years in prison – "we would be forty-three when he is released", Celestial points out. The marriage is shattered. As expected, from this point on Roy and Celestial's lives spool forward at different speeds. Roy is pretty much frozen in place, spending most of his time writing to a wife who is trying to come to terms with what she needs to do next. Many wives wait for their husbands, Roy has noticed, but then Celestial is not just another wife. Her earlier doubts about the marriage resurface, "Til death do us part" is unreasonable, a recipe for failure, she now believes. Tayari Jones achingly explores what happens as our individual selves, slowly evolving over time, leave a marriage behind. A good marriage requires constant recalibration, embracing slowly changing personalities. But what if some of that change occurs at a remove? Neither Roy nor Celestial have any idea what the other is like now. All Roy has is hope, and in that hope he builds a glorified picture of his wife. Celestial, on the other hand, pieces together her artist career and finds support in an old friend, Dre. In chapters alternately narrated by Roy, Celestial and Dre, An American Marriage challenges the reader to question what we buy into when we say "I do." Do we promise unending loyalty no matter what, even if that outcome is uncertain? As Celestial dithers, she also grapples with guilt over her changed self. The title is particularly on point. Roy's only crime is to be a "a black man in the wrong place at the wrong time. This is basic," Jones writes. After all, in America, being a black man can mean that the chances you will be incarcerated is five times more than if you are a white man. Against this context, it is America to blame for the gradual fraying of Roy's and Celestial marriage. That result is the collateral damage from a society where systemic bias is ingrained. This, in other words, is the story of an American marriage. Jones also teases apart the concept of class: "All my life I have been helped by programs like Head Start when I was 5 and Upward Bound all the way through," Roy explains, but Celestial grew up with more comforts. It's the slightest of disparities but one that gnaws at the marrow regardless. At times the characters indulge in a little too much navel-gazing and seem to make the same points about marriage over and over again. These veer dangerously close to reading like platitudes: "Marriage is between two people. There is no studio audience." and "Human emotion is beyond comprehension and smooth and uninterrupted, like an orb made of blown glass." It is the novel's strength that you see the story from all three points of view, although I suspect readers will probably pick a favorite to root for. All told, An American Marriage is a memorable dissection of one of society's most venerable institutions. Hard work or not, Jones brilliantly shows us just how easy it is for things to go awry in the blink of an eye, even in a happy marriage let alone in a less-than-perfect one.

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Submitting a book for review, write the editor, you are here:, an american marriage.

Tayari Jones’ fourth novel, AN AMERICAN MARRIAGE, has been selected as Oprah’s latest Book Club pick, cementing its place as one of the first true must-reads of 2018. The book really is a near-perfect choice for Oprah’s discussion. Not only is it fun to imagine what part Oprah herself might play in the near-inevitable movie adaptation of this highly cinematic novel, but the book has at its heart some deeply complicated moral questions with no easy answers, making it ideal for rich and spirited discussion.

The couple at the center of Jones’ stunning new book are Celestial and Roy. The two met while students at historically black colleges Spelman and Morehouse in Atlanta. Celestial, a lifelong Atlantan, transferred to Spelman after a devastating freshman year at Howard University. Roy, who grew up in tiny Eloe, Louisiana, aspires to life in the big city. After a less-than-auspicious initial meeting (Roy lived in a dorm room adjacent to Celestial’s lifelong best friend and next-door neighbor Andre), the two reencounter one another in New York City after graduation, while Roy is there for a business trip and Celestial is waiting tables to make ends meet while she attends graduate school in fine arts.

"AN AMERICAN MARRIAGE is a novel that manages to be both epic in scope and deeply, at times painfully, intimate, giving readers vivid characters, dramatic situations and profound questions that will stick with them for a long time to come."

The rest, as they say, is history. As Roy narrates in his buoyant introductory chapter, “We were happy…. Maybe we didn’t do happy like other people, but we’re not your garden-variety bourgeois Atlanta Negroes…. I was young, hungry, and on the come-up. Celestial was an artist, intense and gorgeous. We were like Love Jones , but grown.” After a year and a half of marriage, the couple seems poised for whatever life throws at them; they have good jobs, good friends and a house in the suburbs. They’re making plans to start a family. And then, on a trip back to Louisiana to visit Roy’s parents, everything changes.

A chance encounter results in a midnight raid of their motel room and the arrest, and eventual conviction, of Roy for sexual assault. Roy insists he’s innocent, and Celestial believes him, but years into his 12-year sentence, their marriage begins to founder, and Celestial makes a choice that may change everything.

Jones’ novel may be titled AN AMERICAN MARRIAGE, but it’s actually broader than that. In addition to Celestial and Roy’s story, the couple is surrounded by family members with marriage stories of their own. Marriages that end in infidelity, divorce or death; marriages that begin in less-than-ideal circumstances, marriages that offer new beginnings, relationships that look like marriages but for that piece of paper --- the book offers a constellation of marriages that are common and remarkable at the same time. Throughout, Jones also incorporates characters’ small meditations on what marriage is or can be: “Marriage is like grafting a limb onto a tree trunk. You have the limb, freshly sliced, dripping sap, and smelling of springtime, and then you have the mother tree stripped of her protective bark, gouged and ready to receive this new addition…. In my marriage, I never determined which of us was rootstock and which the grafted branch.”

With its focus on a racially charged accusation, a wrongful conviction, and the grim realities of incarceration, Jones also writes a novel that is both topical and timely. In prison, Roy encounters a couple of characters whose presence there might at first seem like a far-fetched coincidence, contrived for narrative convenience --- but in fact, given the incarceration statistics among African American men, may be all too conceivable. AN AMERICAN MARRIAGE is a novel that manages to be both epic in scope and deeply, at times painfully, intimate, giving readers vivid characters, dramatic situations and profound questions that will stick with them for a long time to come.

Reviewed by Norah Piehl on February 9, 2018

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones

• Publication Date: February 5, 2019
• Genres: Fiction
• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Algonquin Books
• ISBN-10: 1616208686
• ISBN-13: 9781616208684

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Tayari Jones

This stirring love story is a deeply 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 into the souls of people who must reckon with the past while moving forward- with hope and pain- into the future.

“It’s among Tayari’s many gifts that she can touch us soul to soul with her words.” — OPRAH WINFREY

“Tayari Jones is blessed with vision to see through to the surprising and devastating truths at the heart of ordinary lives, strength to wrest those truths free, and a gift of language to lay it all out, compelling and clear. That has been true from her very first book, but with An American Marriage that vision, that strength and that truth-telling voice have found a new level of artistry and power.” —MICHAEL CHABON, author of Moonglow: A Novel

“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.” —TOM PERROTTA, author of The Leftovers

“Tayari Jones’ 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, American Marriage is an exquisite, timely, and powerful novel that feels both urgent and indispensable.” —EDWIDGE DANTICAT, author of Breath, Eyes, Memory

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An American Marriage (Oprah's Book Club): A Novel Paperback – February 5, 2019

• Print length 336 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Algonquin Books
• Publication date February 5, 2019
• Dimensions 5.75 x 0.75 x 8.25 inches
• ISBN-10 1616208686
• ISBN-13 978-1616208684
• Lexile measure HL770L
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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Algonquin Books; Reprint edition (February 5, 2019)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 336 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1616208686
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1616208684
• Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ HL770L
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.75 x 0.75 x 8.25 inches
• #608 in Family Life Fiction (Books)
• #881 in Women's Domestic Life Fiction
• #1,723 in Literary Fiction (Books)

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About the author

Tayari jones.

Tayari Jones is the author of the novels Leaving Atlanta, The Untelling, Silver Sparrow, and An American Marriage (Algonquin Books, February 2018). Her writing has appeared in Tin House, The Believer, The New York Times, and Callaloo. A member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, she has also been a recipient of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, Lifetime Achievement Award in Fine Arts from the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, United States Artist Fellowship, NEA Fellowship and Radcliffe Institute Bunting Fellowship. Silver Sparrow was named a #1 Indie Next Pick by booksellers in 2011, and the NEA added it to its Big Read Library of classics in 2016. Jones is a graduate of Spelman College, University of Iowa, and Arizona State University. An Associate Professor in the MFA program at Rutgers-Newark University, she is spending the 2017-18 academic year as the Shearing Fellow for Distinguished Writers at the Beverly Rogers, Carol C. Harter Black Mountain Institute at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

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Customers say

Customers find the emotional tone filled with heartache, injustice, pain, chaos, and forgiveness. They also describe the authenticity as real, raw, and feel-good. Readers love the writing and the lovemaking scenes are brilliantly rendered. They find the content thought-provoking, powerful, gripping, and thought- provoking. However, some find the engagement weird, flat, and incomplete. Opinions are mixed on the ending, with some finding it excellent and surprising, while others say it's strange and over contrived. Reader opinions are mixed also on the reading pace, with others finding it quick and others finding some narratives that move a little slow.

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Customers find the writing brilliant, easy to read, and a page turner. They also appreciate the lovemaking scenes.

"...A quick and easy read !" Read more

"...It’s not exactly a “clean” read and will trigger some but it’s well written " Read more

"...The art of letter writing is not lost . It gripped me to the bittersweet end." Read more

"What a stunning portrayal of love , obligation, dreams, desire and what we as humans can do with what happens to us in this life" Read more

Customers find the book thought-provoking, captivating, and rich with history and details. They also say the plot is good and important, telling the story of an extremely self-aware character. Readers also describe the book as incredible and social commentary.

"... Well written with many metaphors that were poetic !!!A quick and easy read!" Read more

"This was an honest look into a culture i know little about. It’s not exactly a “clean” read and will trigger some but it’s well written" Read more

"The beauty of this powerful and compelling novel is its fine, sensitive balance between the universal experience of falling in and out of love, and..." Read more

"...The strength of the novel is that the author keeps the reader guessing right up until the last page as to whether the marriage of Roy and Celestial..." Read more

Customers find the characters in the book well developed and hard to put down. They also appreciate that the book tells the truth and does not make heroes or villains for them to root for or against.

"...by Tayari’s Jones’ evocative storytelling style—with its rich sense of place and character —the propelling thrust of the unfolding drama, and her..." Read more

"...Jones takes time to develop each character , to help you see their flaws along with their strengths...." Read more

"...to know the struggles of a Black American, but this book is a heart breaking portrayal of what I’m sure millions of Black Americans have gone through..." Read more

"The characters are flawed as all characters should be but it was a little hard for me to relate to any of them. It’s a good if downer of a story...." Read more

Customers find the emotional tone of the book heartwarming, gut wrenching, and satisfying. They also describe the characters as compassionate but flawed. Readers also mention that the book is disheartening, upsetting, and haunting. They describe it as a cautionary tale to the nth degree.

" Sad , tragic, emotional and touching all at the same time! Well written with many metaphors that were poetic!!!A quick and easy read!" Read more

"...It is an emotional , enlightening, painful journey, whether the focus is on true love or the injury of racism, and by the story’s end, I felt as..." Read more

"...L: I found An American Marriage a moving and emotionally painful read , especially, in today’s racially charged climate where police are called by..." Read more

"This book is sad, happy, painful . It makes you feel!! Wonderful, I would definitely recommend this book...." Read more

Customers find the book real, raw, and honest in many ways. They also say it captures life sadly and eloquently. Customers also love the truths sprinkled throughout the book.

"Sad, tragic, emotional and touching all at the same time! Well written with many metaphors that were poetic!!!A quick and easy read!" Read more

"This book is sad, happy, painful. It makes you feel!! Wonderful , I would definitely recommend this book...." Read more

"...of the story are told through letters which gave it a beautiful, genuine feel ...." Read more

"This was both gripping and painful . If you don’t like to get into character’s heads, then don’t read this...." Read more

Customers are mixed about the ending. Some find the story very good, with a redemptive ending. They also say the storyline developed very quickly. However, some customers find the ending strange, melodramatic, and convoluted. They feel there are some back stories that are missing.

"...It takes excellent communication, compromise, and growth while keeping your own individuality ...." Read more

"...The correspondence between Roy and Celestial is somewhat stilted, over contrived , and full of eloquent, philosophical and flowery phrases...." Read more

"...YES, I LOVE IT!! She also does an excellent job with nuancing the cultural issues involved with the incarceration of black men, but she isn't..." Read more

"...It depends what you like to read.The end was very well done and came at the perfect time in the story...." Read more

Customers are mixed about the reading pace. Some find the book a quick read, while others say the narratives move a little slow. They also say the author didn't even try to create suspense and the storyline is predictable.

" Starts off a little slow , but picks up speed. Never read anything by this author Tayari Jones but definitely will check out more of her books...." Read more

"...Well written with many metaphors that were poetic!!!A quick and easy read!" Read more

"...Not much goes on and it progresses quite slowly , building to a very weak climax...." Read more

"...Beautifully written, it unfolded slowly , making the five years seem interminable, but also very real...." Read more

Customers find the book not enjoyable, predictable, and lacking intrigue. They also mention the storyline is weird, flat, and incomplete. Readers also say the characters are annoying and the writing is trash.

"...For me it was too late. The ending? Neither totally satisfying nor totally happy ?..." Read more

"...--but like I said, the ending was a bit weird, flat, and incomplete even , so that's why I give the book 4 stars instead of 5." Read more

"...and lines that are really insightful and powerful, the story itself is very bland ...." Read more

"I liked this book, but it was not a ‘great’ book . It was an easy read, but I don’t know that I fully appreciated the title...." Read more

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Review: New Oprah pick 'An American Marriage' is brilliant, timely

Celestial and Roy are still newlyweds when a visit to Roy’s hometown in small-town Louisiana ends with Roy wrongly accused of rape.

Tayari Jones’ brilliant and heartbreaking novel An American Marriage  (Algonquin, 306 pp., ★★★★ out of four) — announced Tuesday as the latest selection of Oprah's Book Club — exposes the intimate toll of an American shame: the unjust imprisonment of black men. Marriage uncovers the truths that are revealed in the nearly invisible cracks that emerge in relationships, and the devastating harm in secrets of omission.

Roy is an up-and-coming business executive in Atlanta, a Morehouse man from a working-class family who thinks he married up. Celestial is the artistic daughter of a scientist-inventor and his wife.

Roy and Celestial are smitten — really, they are, they tell themselves. Yet Roy collects — and Celestial finds — phone numbers from other women. Celestial turns to her childhood best friend, Andre, when she argues with Roy. Apropos of her name, Celestial is the center of each man’s universe.

Jones ( Silver Sparrow ) alternates chapters among the three, and the reader’s sympathies shift with each new revelation. Celestial and the imprisoned Roy exchange raw letters that pulse with anguish and yearning. Andre’s self-deprecating asides have the wisdom of Buddhist koans. When Celestial locks him out, he notes, “A paperclip could best the catch, but when a woman shuts you out, picking the lock won’t let you back in.”

While Roy serves his time, Celestial sews life-size dolls —  poupées , Roy called them, ever the marketing man. Celestial dresses a doll in prison blues as a political statement and lands an interview with Ebony , where she fails to mention her imprisoned husband. Andre, ever-aware he is a secondary planet in Celestial’s orbit, notices that all the dolls look like Roy. 

Celestial and Dre become lovers, and her disappointed father blames himself for treating her as a princess, shielding her from life’s setbacks. Dre’s father warns him to leave another man’s wife alone — this from the man who abandoned Dre’s mother for another woman. Roy’s father turns to mild subterfuge to help his son win Celestial back.

With spare and shimmering prose that can strike with the shock of a shiv, Jones captures the life-altering losses Roy and Celestial endure in this unforgettable American marriage. 

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An American Marriage

By tayari jones, a affecting novel about a love story and a wrongful conviction.

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones is about a young couple stuck in a love triangle in the wake of a wrongful incarceration. The book has received praise from Barack Obama, and Oprah patronized the book via inclusion in her omnipresent book club.

I actually picked it up based on a misunderstanding of what the book was really about (oops!) as described in the caveats below, but went ahead and finished it anyway.

Oprah with An American Marriage author, Tayari Jones

Plot Summary

Roy and Celestial are a young couple living in Atlanta. When the book opens, they are on a trip to the decidedly Southern town of Eloe, Louisianna to visit Roy’s parents. Celestial is an artist who’s starting to get some traction, and Roy been finding success with his career in business. They are hopeful and in love and they fight and they make up and they are figuring things out, as young couples do.

One night, while they stay in a hotel, the police kick down the door and drag them out of bed. Roy has been falsely accused of raping a woman a few rooms away. A few months later, Roy is sentenced to twelve years in prison.

As the fissures in their marriage deepen, Celestial turns to a childhood friend for support, only for Roy to be released after five years. The three of them are left to navigate an impossible situation while dealing with the hopes and expectations and disappointments of their family members and each other.

Two Caveats

So, two things to note:

1. I was expecting a book that would do a deep dive into the topic of mass incarcerations, wrongful convictions, the treatment of black men in the justice system, and the criminal justice system in general. This is not that book. The trial, the appeal and much of Roy’s time in prison is covered in the beginning, but isn’t the focus of the story.

Instead, it’s essentially a book about relationships — both romantic and familial — that’s been placed in the context of a relevant and important social issue. The wrongful incarceration mostly serves as a catalyst for the plot of the rest of the book.

2. There’s a stretch of the book — roughly 10%, I’d estimate — that is in epistolary form (as in, written as letters back and forth). I’ll leave it to you to decide whether this is a plus or a minus, since some people love this. I’ve always struggled with epistolary novels.

Book Review

For the reasons above, my feelings toward the book shifted a lot while reading it. I found the beginning — which discusses the accusation and conviction — gripping, but I considered abandoning it when the book’s focus moved toward the love triangle aspect of the story. Still, I ended up finishing it, and I’m glad I did.

It’s an interesting and affecting novel, even if it wasn’t the book I was intending to read (see caveats above). Instead, this book is about three people stuck in a love triangle, their relationships and families, their upbringings, and how all of that has impacted their perspectives.

An American Marriage loops around in time, from the arrest and release to retracing Roy and Celestial’s history as a young couple. We find out about their deep history with Andre, the “other man”. We see them fall apart and then we see them fall in love, and all the while we wonder how this situation could possibly be resolved.

The novel scrutinizes each of the main characters’ relationships with their parents and their disparate upbringings. Celestial has the most privileged upbringing, with a relatively stable and well-off family life. Roy grew up with a step-father and his family struggled financially, but he still had a loving childhood and food on the table. Meanwhile, Andre’s family life was less stable, with his father leaving to start a new family.

The book tries to do a lot within its premise — covering the love triangle, dissecting complicated interpersonal relationships, juxtaposing characters with varying socioeconomic backgrounds, delving into criminal justice, and so on and so forth. Not all of it is entirely satisfying, but it certainly provides a lot of fodder for discussion.

As a minor critique, one stylistic aspect of the novel that bugged me was that the story is told from various first-person points of views, but the “voice” of the characters seem to the same or at least very similar. To be fair, making multiple first-person perspectives feel authentic is a lot tougher than (the more common practice of) doing multiple third-person perspectives, where using the same voice to narrate makes sense. I don’t think it ultimately detracted from my enjoyment of the novel, but it was a bit of a distraction.

Read it or Skip it?

Despite its premise, An American Marriage actually doesn’t delve that deeply into the topic of wrongful incarceration. Instead, it covers the intersection of where socioeconomic factors cross with being black in America much more thoroughly, and it presents and dissects complicated romantic and familial relationships.

Overall, I thought it was a good book and enlightening in parts, but didn’t end up feeling strongly about it. As mentioned above, I went into the book thinking it would be largely focused on criminal justice (in my defense, a lot of reviews about it made it seem that way), so I struggled through the parts that were solely about the love triangle. I’d also heard so many great things about this book that I probably had unrealistic expectations.

Either way, its premise of three characters with different upbringings that are navigating an impossible situation provides a lot of good entry points for discussion. “This would be a good book club read” was probably is most prominent thought in my mind as I read this. From the backgrounds of the characters, to the wrongful conviction aspect, to the murky ethics of Celeste and Andre’s relationship, there’s a lot to chew on.

Have you read An American Marriage? What did you think? Is it something you think you’d read? See it on Amazon or Book Depository .

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32 comments

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This sounds like something I would like. Thanks for the review.

So glad to hear that! Thanks for reading, and hope you like it if you get a chance to read it! :)

I really enjoyed this one! I knew what it was about going in, which is always helpful. ;) I listened to the audio version and I’m so glad I did. The narrators were wonderful and brought the story to life in a way I would have missed on my own.

Haha, yeah, I try to only skim the beginning of reviews of books I think I want to read so I can form my own opinions — I guess in this case it led me in the wrong direction, haha. Thanks for the tip re: the audio version! :)

Nice review. I have bought the book but yet have not read. This review made me take up the book ASAP

Glad to hear it! Thanks for dropping by and I hope you like it if you get a chance to read it!

It’s on my list now.

Awesome! Thanks for reading! :)

So far I ‘ve had really good luck with Obama’s endorsements…. and I’m heading to Atlanta, Georgia later this year… so I’m tempted!

Haha yeah, it was definitely the Obama endorsement that shot this book to the top of my list. ATL gets a handful of shoutouts in the book, I actually lived there for a few years, it’s a fun city. Have a great trip!

I think this is the first “meh” review I’ve seen of this book. It’s on my TBR list because it’s been on a bunch of “best books of 2018” lists. It doesn’t sound like my type of book, but I’m interested to see what the hype is about.

I know! I think my expectations were way too high going in since I had seen so many positive reviews. It’s not like it’s a bad book, of course. I think I was just expecting to be blown away. Instead, I think it’s more of a solid book that is worth a read. Hope you like it if you end up reading it!

Great review! Several of my Goodreads friends have praised this novel as one of their favorites of the year, and it’s interesting to see it from another kind of perspective.

Thank you! Yeah, I was expecting to love it, but I think perhaps my expectations were just too high. I still thought it was solid, it just didn’t stick with me enough for me to feel like it was a great book. Thanks for dropping by!

Great review ! And yes,I will skip it….

Aww, to be fair, I think most people really loved it, so may be worth giving it a shot anyway. I’m definitely not trying to deter people from reading it, just recommending that people manage their expectations :) Thanks for dropping by!

I haven’t read this or even heard of it, but it sounds like it might be interesting. Thanks for your thoughtful review.

Thank you Rosi! Glad to be able to intro to you to this book — I know a lot of people really loved it even though I had mixed feelings, so I hope you like it if you get a chance to read it!

I’m not sure how I’d feel about the emphasis on relationships (not my kind of thing) but I’m glad it worked out for you regardless. I haven’t read The Mars Room yet but it sounds a bit more like what you might be looking for!

Oooo, thanks for the tip. Yeah, I think the emphasis on relationships is also why I felt a little “meh” about it — it’s just not something I would have tried to read if I had known. Ahh well, at least I hope others can assess their interest in the book more appropriately if they read this review. Thanks for dropping by! :)

I loved this book, but I hated the epistolary aspect. Epistolary is always a bad choice.

Oh, I’m so glad I’m not the only one that feels this way. I think they always feel a little fake to me so it tends to detach me from the story. Thanks for your thoughts!

This review is more thoughtful than many of my more recent reads. I have rarely read a review that is less of an endorsement on one hand but on the other hand makes me want to read the book. Result: I am going to read the book.

Hi Ron, thanks so much for your thoughts! I really appreciate the feedback. I try really hard to write reviews that are accurate, but let people determine for themselves whether a book is something they’d like, so I appreciate you saying that! Thanks for dropping by and happy reading!

I read this book back during the summer, and I absolutely loved it. It is excellent from beginning to end, but the last 100 pages had my heart beating so fast. Lawdy, I encourage everyone to read this book.

Hi Sandra, thanks for your thoughts! Yeah, I know so many people loved this book, I think my expectations (but in terms of being really high and expecting the book to be different in terms of substance) tripped up my enjoyment of it. I’m glad you liked it though, and thank you for dropping by!

Dropped by to say- I love your Spooktober site theme!

Thank you!! That makes me super happy, haha! :)

This looks like a great read. Thanks for sharing your thoughts! -Jen, The Haute Mommy Handbook

Thanks Jen! Hope you love it if you get a chance to read it!

Great review! I had been eyeing this one as I thought it would delve deeper into the criminal justice system too, so I think I’ll pass on it for now.

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Book review – “An American Marriage” by Tayari Jones

Let me get my cards on the table straight away – I loved this book, and it completely lived up to the hype it has had. It is such an interesting topic for a novel and yet one in which very little actually ‘happens’. It is a tender account of a relationship and the effect that one single event has upon them. It does not once get sentimental, does not set out actively to campaign about the injustice of the one event, and does not take sides. It just lays everything bare for the reader to draw their own conclusions. It will break your heart and fill you with hope at the same time.

Roy and Celestial are a young African-American couple, living in Atlanta, Georgia and their lives are on the up. They come from rather different backgrounds: Celestial is the daughter of a teacher and an academic, and is hoping to forge a career as an artist. Roy is the only son of Olive and Big Roy (who is not his biological father), decidedly more blue-collar but with strong values, pride, and deep Christian faith. They met through a mutual friend, Andre, who has lived next door to Celestial’s parents since they were children. Roy and Celestial are very much in love, but it is still early days in their marriage and they have their ups and downs.

They visit Roy’s parents in Louisiana one weekend and decide to stay in a motel; Olive has a slight suspicion about her daughter-in-law’s commitment to her son and it is more comfortable for both women if the couple do not stay in the family home. Roy and Celestial have an argument and Roy storms out of their motel room. He meets with a white woman whilst fetching ice and the two get talking. He tells her about the argument with his wife. Later that night, the police storm Roy and Celestial’s room whilst they are sleeping and arrest Roy on suspicion of rape of the woman he had chatted with earlier in the evening. At the trial, the woman testifies with certainty against Roy and it is quite apparent that Roy has little chance of escaping a guilty verdict, even though his innocence is clear to all who know him. Roy is sentenced to twelve years in prison.

The early chapters set the scene, switching between first person accounts by Roy and Celestial of their backgrounds, how they met and their recollections of the fateful night. The following chapters are an exchange of letters between the couple whilst Roy is in jail. Although Celestial visits him every month from Atlanta, the letters are an important way for them to keep their love alive. Just a couple of years into Roy’s sentence, however (and only 80 pages into the book), Celestial tells Roy that she can no longer go on being his wife, that they have spent longer apart than they were together, and that the situation is intolerable for her. We learn that Celestial was pregnant at the time of Roy’s trial but that they decided she should have an abortion as neither wanted their child to grow up with its father in prison. It is a metaphor for the doomed future of their marriage. Their correspondence ceases, and the remaining letters in this section are between Roy and his lawyer, Robert Banks, a family friend of Celestial’s parents, both about Roy’s appeal, which seems futile at this stage, and the status of his marriage.

This might seem the like the end of the thing. What we know about the couple at this stage is that Celestial is a strong-willed, independent woman who knows her own mind, and that Roy is proud, stubborn and conservative. The situation seems hopeless.

Roy spends five years in jail altogether, during which time he learns things about the status of African-Americans in the penal system he had no concept of before. He also, by chance, meets and shares a cell with his biological father, Walter. Also, Roy’s mother, Olive dies of lung cancer, never to see her son walk free. Eventually, Roy’s appeal succeeds and he is released, but he is by now broken, alone, his career in ruins. The remainder of the book is about Roy’s reunion with his old life, his hometown, Big Roy, and most importantly, with Celestial. Can their relationship be salvaged?

I don’t want to give any spoilers here, but I would just suggest that if you are looking for a romantic ending this book, thankfully, chooses not go (entirely!) down that route. It is a fine and up-close examination of the real human impact of judicial complacency, institutional racism, social prejudice and how some sectors of American society just get fewer life chances. It is also about a clash of values, between the more conservative older generation and the younger, educated, more metropolitan groups who assume there is equality.

This book is fascinating, beautiful, gripping and challenging and I recommend it highly.

If you have already read this book I would love to know your thoughts.

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An American Marriage by Tayari Jones review – packed with ideas and emotion

The writer’s engrossing fourth novel, the tale of a terrible miscarriage of justice, is a worthy award winner

T his is the first of Tayari Jones’s four novels to appear in the UK and her publisher’s confidence has been rewarded; earlier this month, An American Marriage won the Women’s prize for fiction , all but guaranteeing Jones a new readership. And one appreciates why the jury picked it from a strong shortlist that included Booker winners Pat Barker and Anna Burns – it is an immensely readable novel, packed with ideas and emotion.

It centres on an appalling miscarriage of justice. Recently wed Roy and Celestial are staying in a motel on a visit to Roy’s parents in small-town Louisiana when they are suddenly ripped from their beds and thrown to the asphalt outside, lying in “parallel like burial plots”. A woman whom Roy briefly met earlier in the evening while fetching ice has been raped and has identified – with certainty, but no apparent evidence – Roy as the perpetrator. Jones neither elaborates on the circumstances of the assault, nor the subsequent trial; the reader is simply given to understand that a black man, in the wrong place at the wrong time, will find retribution meted out swiftly and unquestioningly.

Jones’s cleverness is to leave this monolithic fact to function as a sinkhole at the centre of the novel; a fundamental instability that threatens everything around it, irrespective of the state of play before it opens up. In fact, we have reason to believe that Roy and Celestial’s marriage is precarious. Despite a strong bond, incompatibilities are beginning to appear; on the evening of Roy’s arrest, they are quarrelling about his propensity to keep secrets, including that of his paternity. But the question of whether their marriage would have continued, despite Roy’s tendency to flirting with other women, Celestial’s aspiration to forge a career as a textile artist and her ambivalence over having children, becomes suddenly moot, stopped like a broken clock.

Jones has said that An American Marriage is a novel in conversation with The Odyssey ; the story of a man trying to get back home to a waiting wife and a wife unsure of the extent to which she is permitted to rebuild her own life. Like Penelope, Celestial is a maker – in this case, of exquisitely crafted black dolls that occupy a space somewhere between art and high-end commercial artefact. From a well-off Atlanta family – her father an inventor who has struck gold – her aspirations are different from those of Roy, whose impetus has been to escape Louisiana, to assert himself in the ranks of corporate America and to establish an unassailable life.

It’s the complex individuality of all the novel’s characters that allows it to become much more than its simple storyline suggests. Narrated in turns by Roy and Celestial, with a third strand from their closest friend, Andre, it brings to life two distinct worlds: that of Roy’s childhood, in which his mother, Olive, and adoptive father, Big Roy, concentrate their efforts on making ends meet and protecting and promoting their only child, and that of Celestial’s, at ease with discussing history and politics and ideas, of mulling over questions of identity and destiny. And yet, isolated by a criminal justice system obsessed with incarceration, these two groups of people must, and do, unify against a common enemy.

Jones’s first novel, Leaving Atlanta , animated the real-life murders of black boys between 1979 and 1981; The Untelling and Silver Sparrow , her second and third, also centre on class and race divides in the city. It’s to be hoped that her recent success makes it more likely that British readers will find them, too, alongside this thoroughly engrossing and impressive novel.

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An american marriage [book review].

August 3, 2018

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones

Genre/Categories: Fiction, African-American, Cultural Heritage, Family Life, Racial Injustice

***This post contains Amazon affiliate links.

Celestial and Roy are newlyweds living in the New South. While Celestial is an aspiring artist, Roy is a young executive. Early in their marriage, Roy is arrested and sentenced to twelve years for a crime he didn’t commit. Can their marriage survive the tragic circumstances and the separation? Soon after incarceration, Celestial begins to accept comfort and companionship from Andre, her childhood friend and Roy’s best man at their wedding. When Roy is released from prison five years later, he expects to pick up his life where he’s left off, but a great deal has changed. This is a thoughtful and heartfelt story of love, marriage, family, and friendship, of hope and heartbreak, of loss and starting over.

Amazon Rating (August): 4.5 Stars

My Thoughts:

At first I was reluctant to read an Oprah Book Club selection because of the hype and I was concerned that it might be primarily an issues driven book. However, when my IRL book club chose it for our August read and after reading some positive reviews from respected bloggers, I became more interested. An American Marriage is probably the most surprising good read of the year for me …… I’ve been disappointed before by books that don’t live up to their hype. This one has likely earned a spot on my favorites of the year list.

Themes. If you’ve followed my reviews, you know that one element that endears me to a book is its themes. An American Marriage is filled with relevant themes such as the importance of fathers (absent or present), sustaining marriage through difficult times, troubling incarceration rates of young African Americans, women setting aside traditional roles, stigmas attached to women whose husbands are incarcerated, educated middle class young African Americans and their views of community and family, southern traditions, etc. Issues are presented in this story, but it’s not an issue-centered read. I appreciate what the author says about her writing:

“My mentor used to tell me, ‘Write about people and their problems. Don’t write about problems and their people.'”

This is what I loved about this story….it’s about people and their problems and not simply a vehicle for the author to promote opinions or agendas.

Characters. This is not a story filled with all likeable characters. Yet they are authentic, realistic, and well developed. We see their positive and negative attributes and understand their motivations as the story progresses. Throughout the reading, I was unable to predict how this story would resolve and this kept me engaged until the last page.

Recommended. I highly recommend this easy reading, engaging, realistic, and heartfelt story for readers who are looking for a contemporary, diverse read with relevant and timely issues. An American Marriage would make an excellent book club selection and I’m eager to hear what my IRL book club thinks next week.

Own Voices: If you are an Own Voices reviewer, I’d love to read your review. Please link in comments.

 My Rating: 4.5 Stars.

An American Marriage Information here

Meet the Author, Tayari Jones

Is American Marriage on your TBR or have you read it?

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If you’ve read An American Marriage , how did you feel about the ending?

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14 comments.

About “An American Marriage”… I, too, was kept guessing about how it would end and enjoyed the letter exchanges as a way to move the story along through the characters. I focused on what commitment meant to each character and to the enduring marriages… and should you chose someone who was a “ known fit” and comfortable, like Andre was? The “ lead” couple weren’t a good fit… they didn’t need each other. They may have been in love, but they weren’t a fit for marriage. The ending was what it needed to be… Gail Spear

I thought the letters worked well too! I thought exploring each character’s flaws was enlightening and realistic. Eager to discuss this at book club! It was a great selection! Thanks for commenting!

Glad to read your review Carol. Have this book sitting on my nightstand from the library– but first I have to finish next months lit group book (The Alice Network– just OK and Long!!) You’ve made me more excited to dig in to An American Marriage. Love your reliable recommendations.

My book club met last night to discuss it…… we all enjoyed it but thought Celestial was an unlikeable character. It’s among my fav reads of the year. I hope you enjoy it! Thanks as always for following along and your generous comments!

I’m trying to get to it before the library wants it back!! –I’ve read my share of unlovable characters, I guess. Just people! xox

I should clarify……she’s not seriously unlikeable….just a bit spoiled and commitment is not her strongest trait. I did appreciate the author’s creation of well developed characters including flaws…..very much regular people! It’s a fairly easy reading book so you’ll probably be able to read it quickly.

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Slanted Spines

An American Marriage: A Book Review

This book review contains plot details and spoilers from An American Marriage by Tayari Jones. It is intended for readers who have already read this book. You have been warned!!

The Slanted Spines 2020 Booklist reading for March was An American Marriage by Tayari Jones, a 2018 selection for Oprah’s Book Club. In this novel, Celestial and Roy are living out their childhood dreams of success. They’ve been married for just a year when a Roy is arrested for a crime he didn’t commit, and due to a faulty justice system, he spends five years in prison despite his innocence. However, during Roy’s absence from free life, Celestial forms a relationship with their mutual friend, Andre. When Roy is finally released, Roy, Celestial, and Andre find themselves in a complicated love triangle. What is love, and to whom do we owe what?

Tayari Jones has written three novels prior to An American Marriage , her most noteworthy having been Silver Sparrow . She lives in her hometown of Atlanta and teaches creative writing at Emory University.

This may be my second favorite book of 2020, right after Where the Crawdads Sing . I read the first half of this so hungrily that I never stopped to underline anything, which is annoying to present-me, the “me” who has to write a book review about it, but this is also a testament to how invested in the book I was. Side note, I love how all of the Slanted Spines Booklist readings so far have involved court scenes and the justice system.

Anyway, although I really enjoyed this book, I do have a few critiques, so keep reading for my breakdown! (I’m talking about an analytical breakdown, not an emotional breakdown. I’ve had enough of those this month…)

The Writing

Tayari Jones writes about human emotions so romantically, and this book is full of complicated feelings. She wields a pen creatively, writing from a primal part of her heart—sometimes, in fact, her gut. In one of Roy’s letters to Celestial from prison, he writes:

But now all I have is this paper and this raggedy ink pen. It’s a ballpoint, but they take away the casing so you just have the nib and this plastic tube of ink. I’m looking at it, thinking, This is all I have to be a husband with? But here I am trying. Page 43

For a book to be focused on the complicated emotions surrounding marriage, love, and heartache, the description of those emotions need to be vivid and well-compared, and Jones does a nice job of this.

Interestingly, this novel is told through a few different lenses. It begins with alternating chapters between Roy’s narration and Celestial’s narration, then once Roy is arrested, the plot is told through their letters to each other while he’s imprisoned. When Roy is released, it returns to their alternating narration, but now with Andre’s perspective thrown into the mix.

One of my biggest critiques about An American Marriage is that it should have only been told in third person, with the brief section containing Roy and Celestial’s first person letters. During the end of the book, the perspective changed so frequently that I often forgot which character was narrating. This may not have been a problem if each character had a distinct voice, but all Celestial, Roy, and Andre told their angles in a very similar style. There was nothing the reader gained through the first person narrators that they couldn’t have gained through a more simple telling via an omniscient third person narrator. Tayari Jones writes beautifully, but I know that Roy and Andre aren’t as emotionally poetic or as eloquent about describing how they feel. As Roy himself said in his first letter to Celestial, “I’m not a man for words. My daddy showed me that you do for a woman” (page 42). It didn’t feel genuine that Roy would write, when visiting his mother’s grave:

I had not cried since I was sentenced and I had humiliated myself before a judge who didn’t care. On that horrible day, my snotty sobbing had merged with Celestial and Olive’s mournful accompaniment. Now I suffered a cappella; the weeping burned my throat like when you vomit up strong liquor. That one word, Mama , was my only prayer as I thrashed on the ground like I was feeling the Holy Ghost, only what I was going through wasn’t rapture. Page 202

So then why write in first person if the narration doesn’t sound like the character’s voice? What’s difficult about writing in first person is that it has to be genuine to the character. Take The Sound and the Fury , for example—when Faulkner writes from Benjy’s perspective, it’s different from Quentin’s narration. Even though Faulkner is a skilled writer, he doesn’t write as himself when he’s telling Benjy’s story—Benjy is mentally challenged and therefore doesn’t use the same vocabulary as Faulkner does, which means when Faulkner writes as Benjy, he has to demonstrate restraint and empathy, restraining himself from writing lavishly and using empathy to see the world from Benjy’s eyes.

In a follow-up essay entitled “This is a Love Story,” Tayari Jones mentions that she wrote this book three times—first, from the perspective of Celestial, which didn’t feel quite right, and a second time from the perspective of Roy, which also didn’t feel quite right. Then, she says she realized it was their story, so in the third writing, she gave all three of them a voice. While I admire her dedication to the character’s integrity, I think she should have explored the idea of a tender third person narrator, who could gently weave in and out of these tragedies.

Jones—in this novel—is trying to thoroughly illustrate the complexities of the relationships between the three main characters, lyrically detailing the contents of their hearts. In order to do this more effectively, she should have written in third person and used all the same insightful language she did through the first person narration. But if Jones really believed that she needed to tell this in alternating first person, then she should have differentiated each character’s voice and speech tendencies more drastically. The voices are just too similar as they are, and it does a disservice to her wonderful writing, the lifelike quality of the characters, and this intriguing story.

Sometimes, to be a better writer, you can’t write “the best writing.” You have to write the most accurate writing to the story you’re telling.

• What was your favorite line or passage from the novel?
• Did you like the different first person perspectives? Were they easy for you to follow?
• What’s your favorite book that features multiple perspectives?

The Characters

This book has three main characters and a cast of supporting characters. Jones succeeds with these characters—they are lifelike and multifaceted. But I think I may have enjoyed the supporting characters the most. Big Roy is an easy favorite for me because of how sweet and loyal he is, although all of the family characters are great because of the wisdom they’re constantly sharing. (More on this later.)

Because this novel has so many main characters—although there could be an argument made that Andre doesn’t count as a main character—this book review will break down each person’s story arc. I think it’s clear that Jones put more thought into creating Roy and Celestial, but the reader learns a lot about Andre (such as his relationship with his father Carlos) that points to his significance within the book.

Roy. From small town Eloe, Louisiana, Roy is raised by Olive and her husband Big Roy (although Big Roy is not Roy’s biological father, he accepts him as his own son). After high school, he moves to Atlanta for college, where he graduates and earns a corporate job. He is successful by all standard means—he has the house, the job, the wife—until a tragic incident and a mix-up lead to his arrest and incarceration. While he is in prison, some of his encounters are traumatic, such as when another inmate tries to stab him to death, while others are more formative, such as when “Ghetto Yoda” (AKA Roy’s biological father!! Plot twist!) gives him advice.

While at first his letters to Celestial are romantic, after she has an abortion, their arguments increase; the abortion was a mutual decision, but their feelings about their future are more complex than black-and-white. Over his time in jail, she becomes preoccupied and distant, and after countless more disagreements, she writes to him that she no longer wants to be his wife, although she never officially divorces him. When Roy is released, he’s not sure where they stand. Determined to reclaim his wife and the life he knew before prison, he travels to Atlanta where Celestial still lives, and where his key to her house still works. He is desperate, lonely, scarred, but also temperamental and frustrated. She has continued her life without him, but he wants to pick back up five years ago. His anger is apparent when Celestial denies to sleep with him, and he tells her that although he will respect her wishes, he could most definitely do what he wanted to her, flexing his power over her.

In perhaps not his brightest move but definitely one of his most passionate, he ends up attacking Old Hickey, Celestial’s family tree, and also attacking Andre. His frustration is explosive, and after things calm down, Celestial shocks everyone and chooses to stay with Roy, although this doesn’t last long. Her love isn’t genuine, and Roy is still intrigued by Davina, a one-night fling post-prison, and so they part and move on separately.

With Roy, you can observe his maturity throughout the story. He starts off confident and spunky, a mouthy and successful young man, but after prison, he’s more stoic and intense. “He was bigger now than when he lived in this house, his body harder and more muscular, but I recognized his energy, almost on the verge of action… Roy’s face was broader and more lined than when I last saw him…” Celestial describes Roy (page 236). At first, after Roy is released, he is hellbent on his life returning to the way it was five years earlier; his memories are what got him through prison, what gave him hope to keep getting up every day. However, now that he is back in the real world, perhaps the greatest amount of his growth occurs during the turmoil with Celestial, when they finally get to confront each other with their feelings, forced to see each other as they are today, not as how they were in the the past. It’s when they finally do this that they’re able to accept what’s actually best for them, and move on.

Celestial. Born and raised in Atlanta, Celestial grows up to be an artistic and independent woman. Both Roy and Andre understand this quality and are drawn to her for it. “Celestial liked to go her own way and you could tell that from looking at her,” Roy mentions when he first describes her (page 8). This is also one of the first things Andre explains; after Andre says he knew she didn’t belong to him, he adds, “If you knew her, you would know that she never belonged to him [Roy] either. I’m not sure if she even realized it herself, but she’s the kind of woman who will never belong to anyone” (page 96). She is very headstrong and driven about her art—handcrafting baby dolls, a business she calls Poupee’s. Although she loves Roy, they have a fierce tendency to argue with each other, which continues and strains their relationship when he’s in prison. Eventually, after three years, she cannot remain devoted to Roy and breaks up with him, and at some point she turns to her lifelong best friend Andre for romantic support. Their relationship blossoms, which her father disapproves of, but Celestial and Andre attempt to be as respectful towards Roy’s memory as possible. After Roy is released early, she tries to explain her and Andre’s love to Roy, but ultimately (after a lot of drama) she sacrifices her true happiness so that she can help Roy heal.

However, because this book wants to subvert your expectations no matter who you predicted Celestial would choose, in the very last section of the book, the reader finds out that Celestial and Roy mutually break up after they sense a disconnect in their relationship. Celestial returns to Andre, and although she refuses to marry, she does become pregnant with his child.

Five years is a long time, and Celestial changes while Roy’s in prison, too. When he sees her again, he comments, “She was different now, sadder” (page 239). One of the differences in her that bothers Roy is her hair—while before, she wore her hair in a “defiant cloud,” in his absence, Celestial buzzes her hair. “I wanted her back to the way she was when I met her, pretty and a little outrageous” (page 261). Her nature is notably somber in the latter half; when Roy returns, she is often silent or answers in short sentences, whereas in the former half, she is passionate and feisty in their interactions.

Honestly, I’m really not “over” Celestial choosing Roy. I can’t tell if this choice is character growth or character deterioration—she would clearly rather be with Andre, yet is willing to let go of their relationship so that she can give Roy what he wants? “Dre, we have so much… and he has nothing. Not even his mother,” Celestial says to Andre (page 288). She explains that she and Andre will only be heartbroken, whereas Roy is starting from scratch.

So… Let me get this straight… Tayari Jones is telling me that Celestial seriously goes back to the man who said, “with a trace of menace, ‘I could take it if I wanted to’” (page 249)??

Celestial is a firecracker—sensitive and mysterious, albeit, but a firecracker. Celestial speaks of herself in college, “even at nineteen, I was not one to be played with” (page 35). Celestial is the woman who ran down New York City streets in heels after a robber on her first date with Roy. You’re telling me that THAT Celestial is the same Celestial who wrote, “A woman doesn’t always have a choice, not in a meaningful way. Sometimes there is a debt that must be paid, a comfort that she is obliged to provide, a safe passage that must be secured. Every one of us has lain down for a reason that was not love” (page 246)?? For context, Celestial is talking about how she owes her husband sex after he gets out of prison. Now do you see what I’m talking about when I say “character deterioration”?

While I admire her selfless compassion for Roy, it’s clear that she doesn’t truly love Roy despite picking him over Andre. This just doesn’t seem like something Celestial would do. As a woman, so often we are asked to compromise our dreams and desires in exchange to coddle a man’s shortcomings—women have been generally expected to take on the majority of childcare and sacrifice their hobbies to do so, women are often considered “threatening” to a man’s ego if they hold a higher-esteemed career position, and so on. Celestial’s own mother compliments Celestial’s self-empowerment; in a reflection, Celestial recalls how her mother once told her “You have always run toward what you want. Your father always tries to break you of this, but you are just like him, brilliant but impulsive and a tiny bit selfish. But more women should be selfish… Or else the world will trample you” (page 210).

So it’s interesting to me that Jones wrote Celestial’s arc like this: at first driven for her own desires, then cascading into the obligation of a role, as if decided out of guilt (“Guilt seeps in through the cracks in my logic,” she writes, page 111). The years have weathered her, and Celestial emotionally distances herself in order to cope, whittling away at the determination she once was so sure of, but now questions.

Thankfully, this is not the end for Celestial, though. During the epilogue in a letter to Roy, Celestial mentions that she doesn’t want to officially marry Andre, which I think indicates a step in the right direction for Celestial. At an emotional low point halfway through the novel, right when she finds out Roy is being released from prison, she agrees to marry Andre. This is something she isn’t ecstatic about, but seems to be cajoled into accepting. It appears though, after reflection and trying to make it work again with Roy, when she comes out of her failed marriage, she asserts herself and decides she isn’t ready for marriage again, not yet.

Andre. Andre’s arc is less fascinating to me. He’s the typical good guy, “the boy next door” and Celestial’s lifelong best friend. Fortunately, by the end of the novel, his character develops somewhat of a backbone; after crushing on Celestial his whole life and during her marriage, she makes a move on him while Roy is prison, and although he tries to resist, she is everything he has ever wanted in a relationship. Although he feels guilty, Andre is clearly happiest with Celestial, and it’s cute to see.

When Roy is released, Andre and Celestial choose to remain together. Andre travels to Eloe to talk to Roy, but Roy dodges his visit and simultaneously travels to Atlanta to see Celestial. After a sleepover with Big Roy, Andre rejoins Roy and Celestial at the end of the novel, and he literally takes a beating from Roy so that he and Celestial can stay together. (Now that’s commitment.) Whereas he has merely been a supporting character to Celestial’s life, he now lays his life down for the chance to be her lover. Other than bolstering more confidence, though, we see little other growth from Andre; this is to be expected though, because it’s obvious this book is only about him because of his proxy to Roy and Celestial’s narratives.

• Who was your favorite character and why?
• Do you feel like the three main characters are well developed throughout this book?
• How do you feel about Celestial’s character arc?

This is a love story. As I mentioned earlier in this book review, I read Jones’ post-novel essay (titled as such) and she explained how this story, although originally intended to be a fictional commentary on the targeting of young (especially non-white) men and mass incarceration, ultimately turned out to be a love story.

Before I read this book, I didn’t look at the back cover’s summary. Even despite this, I knew that Andre would be a “problem” in Roy and Celestial’s relationship, and so I predicted Celestial and Andre’s hook-up. The plot is straightforward: Roy and Celestial are married, Roy goes to prison for a crime he didn’t commit, Celestial and Andre fall in love, Roy gets out of prison, Andre and Roy fight for Celestial. It’s predictable. The drama is fun though, and it heats up and when Roy starts hacking at Old Hickey in the middle of his rage—I definitely paused to laugh and explain this ridiculous scene to Bryant.

I would have liked another sub-plot. We could count Olive’s passing away and Mr. Davenport disapproving of Celestial’s relationship with Andre as sub-plots, but I think one more intelligently-executed sub-plot would have really elevated this story. It was so focused on the main thread—Roy, Celestial, and Andre all leading up to this moment when they made their final choices—that the plot was a little unexciting unless it was detailing their drama. I would have liked to see some more family issues or external conflict to add another level to the novel, so long as it was integrated into the story in a well-organized manner.

Overall, though, the predictable and simple plot did not detract from the enjoyment of the novel, and this was a pretty successful spin on the typical love triangle dilemma.

Also, I love when books have “Discussion questions” at the end, so I would like us to ponder a few of them here:

• The title of this novel is An American Marriage . Do you feel this title accurately represents the novel? Why or why not? And if you do find the title appropriate, what about the story makes it particularly “American”?
• When Celestial asks Roy if he would have waited for her for more than five years, he doesn’t answer her question but reminds her that, as a woman, she would not have been imprisoned in the first place. Do you feel that his response is valid, and do you think it justifies his infidelity? Do you believe that he would have remained faithful if Celestial had been the one incarcerated? Does this really matter, and if so, why?
• You may have noticed that Tayari Jones does not specify the race of the woman who accuses Roy of rape. How did you picture this woman? What difference does the race of this woman make in the way you understand the novel’s storyline?

Throughout this book, elders’ advice is a recurring element. Roy, Celestial, and Andre refer to “so-and-so used to say” constantly, as though they’ve heard these lessons repeated so many times over the years that they’ve mastered the recitation, if not the application.

Gloria once told me that your best quality is also your worst. Page 210

When it comes to making any complicated decisions, there is often a parental drop of wisdom to be mentioned by the narrator. Thankfully, the three of them all have the guidance of an elder—Olive, Big Roy, and Walter teach Roy, Mr. Davenport and Gloria educate Celestial, and Mr. Davenport, Evie, Carlos (minimally, though), and Big Roy help Andre. Even beyond the grave, Olive’s wise anecdotes come to Roy:

I was at the BP station… when I finally heard what I think was my mama’s voice in my ear. Any fool can up and go . Whenever she started saying what “any fool” could do, she followed up with how a “real man” would handle the problem… She aimed them at me constantly and I did my best to be the real man she had in mind. Page 203

Not to mention, Roy finds an old letter Olive had written him, warning him not to marry Celestial at the time. Meanwhile, Celestial reflects on the advice her own father gave her on their wedding day: “As we danced at my wedding reception, my father had said, ‘Let the man be the man sometimes… At some point you will come to accept your limitations’” (page 225). Perhaps this is the advice she ultimately decides to follow when she makes her choice to stay with Roy.

The characters even bond over old adages like sayings spoken at Baptist funerals; when Roy, discouraged after his first night with Celestial again, calls Davina, she says, “Go on to sleep. Like they say, weeping endures for a night,” to which Roy responds, “But joy comes in the morning” (page 252).

It’s apparent that these phrases bring comfort and clarity to their lives. Roy, Celestial, and Andre deeply respect their parents (with the exception of Carlos) and the lessons they’ve taught them. Walter earns Roy’s respect by dolling out wisdom, always having something insightful to share. In fact, Walter often gives advice that Roy should follow and doesn’t, which gets him into more trouble. When Roy is about to be released from prison, he writes, “According to [Walter], the key is to wipe your mind clean. The future is what I should think about” (page 124). Is that not exactly what gets Roy in trouble—trying to recreate the past with Celestial? (Whoooo, I just got The Great Gatsby flashbacks! Hellooo, Jay and Daisy!) If Roy could have let go of the past, he wouldn’t have instigated with Celestial and Andre and caused a huge scene.

Although the three main characters may have been better off following the wisdom of their elders right off the bat, it seems that they may have not sufficiently learned their lessons. If Roy had listened to his mother and not married Celestial, if Celestial had listened to her father and called off her relationship with Andre, if Andre had listened to Big Roy and given Celestial and Roy a year’s worth of time—sure, it may have been wiser of them, but the lessons accompanied with their choices wouldn’t be as solidified. Often, the bite-sized phrase is the reward for a lifetime of mistakes one learns from, and it’s up to each individual to find out how we arrive at these nuggets of guidance.

There is so much to dissect about this book, which is why, despite my critiques, I am intrigued by it; Jones created a dynamic, interesting work of literature that is ripe for discussion and analysis, and the more I add to this book review, the more I realize how much text there is to unpack. That’s why this earns a well-deserved spot as my #2 favorite read of 2020.

Thanks for reading! Now, what did you think?

Read along with Slanted Spines! At the beginning of the year, I posted the Slanted Spines 2020 Booklist , an assigned book for each month! The April book is Carrie Pilby by Caren Lissner, so if you want to join in the discussion, check it out and read it before the last Friday of April!

Also, please feel free to jump in on past books! You can read my other Book Reviews here . I’m always happy to talk about literature!

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The Literary Edit

Review: An American Marriage – Tayari Jones

If you’re looking for a spell-binding and thought-provoking book that will make you question birthright and privilege, read on for my An American Marriage review.

I read An American Marriage by Tayari Jones in a single sitting. Having been lauded by the likes of both Oprah and Barack Obama, it had been on my radar for a while and so, when on a recent visit to my local bookshop, Gertrude & Alice, I saw that they had a copy in stock, I happily added it to my ever growing pile of books and later devoured it one windy afternoon in Rose Bay.

As a reader who is both female and white, I am no doubt unaware of a great deal of the racism and injustice suffered at the hands of black people, particularly men, in America, and, given my privilege, would hate to try and comment too extensively on a subject that I’ve only ever been privy to from afar. Suffice it to say the problem is a horrific and ongoing one, and it is beautifully explored within the pages of Tayari Jones’ An American Marriage. Powerful, poignant, subtle and sad, An American Marriage is an unputdownable tale that is about both the criminal justice system in America, and the personal, long-term consequences of its widespread oppression.

While being a black American is a prominent pillar of the novel, it is not so much its focus, but more so the stage on which this tale of love and loyalty is set. Rather than using her novel to explore the bias and discrimination the characters face, Jones uses the incarceration of central character Roy as a way in which to look at the consequences of injustice, and how it can bring about the break down of relationships; both familial and romantic.  With an entirely non-white cast and chapters narrated by different characters, the book’s pacy plot makes it gripping until the very final page.

The story opens with recently married Celestial and Roy who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and become victims of an ill twist of fate when Roy is accused, charged and sentenced to twelve years for the rape of a woman he didn’t commit. What follows is a prison sentence – a literal one for Roy; a metaphorical one for Celeste – that slowly picks apart at the seams of their marriage, and asks its readers to consider whether there ever comes a point in a marriage or relationship where loyalty can no longer be expected.

I defy anyone to read this thought-provoking tale and remain unaffected by the widespread nature of racial injustice that is both explored within the story’s pages and sadly still so prevalent in today’s society. A haunting read with beautiful prose and rich characterisation that fosters empathy in its reader we would all do well to read more books like this.

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones Summary

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.

About Tayari Jones

Tayari Jones is the author of the novels Leaving Atlanta, The Untelling, Silver Sparrow, and An American Marriage (Algonquin Books, February 2018). Her writing has appeared in Tin House, The Believer, The New York Times, and Callaloo. A member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, she has also been a recipient of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, Lifetime Achievement Award in Fine Arts from the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, United States Artist Fellowship, NEA Fellowship and Radcliffe Institute Bunting Fellowship. Silver Sparrow was named a #1 Indie Next Pick by booksellers in 2011, and the NEA added it to its Big Read Library of classics in 2016. Jones is a graduate of Spelman College, University of Iowa, and Arizona State University. She is currently an Associate Professor in the MFA program at Rutgers-Newark University.

Looking for some further reading? There are lots of great online reviews of An American Marriage. This An American Marriage book review from The New York Times is an excellent read, and if you loved Tayari Jones brilliant novel, Books and Beyond have put together a great selection of books like An American Marriage .

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An American Marriage

Tayari Jones | 4.18 | 223,083 ratings and reviews

Ranked #3 in Oprah , Ranked #6 in 2018 — see more rankings .

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Barack Obama Former USA President As 2018 draws to a close, I’m continuing a favorite tradition of mine and sharing my year-end lists. It gives me a moment to pause and reflect on the year through the books I found most thought-provoking, inspiring, or just plain loved. It also gives me a chance to highlight talented authors – some who are household names and others who you may not have heard of before. Here’s my best of 2018 list. (Source)

Bill Gates CEO/Microsoft A moving look at how incarceration changes relationships. (Source)

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• #22 in Abortion
• #24 in Adultery
• #7 in African American
• #96 in Audio
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• #59 in Book Club
• #85 in Chick Lit
• #43 in Diverse
• #66 in Divorce
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