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Love, loss and realignment – novel set in Atlanta

30th August 2019

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones – novel set in Atlanta.

novel set in Atlanta

Newly married Roy and Celeste are black, upwardly mobile and living the American Dream, he as a corporate executive, she as an artist making fancy dolls.

They may have come from slightly different sides of the African American track – Roy from Louisiana, Celeste from a middle-class Atlanta suburb – but their future together is assured.

Until Roy is sentenced to 12 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.

Author Tayari Jones has woven together a heart-breaking story of love, loss and realignment, using lyrical, lilting language of the southern states and sensitive, nuanced insights into the differences between intense passion and enduring love.

While Roy is locked up, letters to each other help the reader to understand the shift in their relationship:

‘Dear Roy

Your last letter upset me so much. What can I say to make you see this isn’t about shame? Our story is too tender to explain to strangers. Don’t you see? If I say that my husband is in prison, that’s all anyone can focus on, not me or my dolls. Even when I explain that you’re innocent, all they remember is the fact that you’re incarcerated. Even when I tell the truth about you, the truth doesn’t get delivered.’

Celeste stops visiting and writing, and becomes closer to childhood friend and best man Andre. But when Roy is released after five years, will Celeste and Roy resume their marriage or have they drifted too far apart?

‘Why I chose to save the one letter that hurt me most, I don’t know. But now, on my first night of breathing unfettered air, here I was about to read it again. If I could have stopped myself, I would have. Unfolding the page carefully so that it wouldn’t give way at the softened creases, I ran my fingers under the words, feeling for the hope I sometimes found sheltered there.’

The love triangle moves towards its dramatic denouement in chapters related by Roy, Celeste and Andre, but with a subtlety of story and tone that ensures the reader cares passionately about all the protagonists.

At its heart this is a story about different forms of love, but Tayari Jones also cleverly probes issues of race and justice, social mobility, family and parenthood.

A worthy winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2019.

In TripFiction terms, the sense of place may be more generically the southern states of the USA, rather than transporting the reader to Atlanta or Louisiana, but that in no way detracts from the power of this wonderful book.

Andrew for the TripFiction team

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