Winner of the 2019 Women’s Prize for Fiction

When Barack Obama reviews a book from his summer reading pile and says it’s “a moving portrayal”, then in my opinion you’re onto a good thing. An American Marriage was this month’s pick for the book group I attend, and coincidentally it had recently been in an Audible sale, so I had it queued up ready to go. I won’t say much here about the group’s opinions - because what happens at book group, stays at book group…!

The novel tracks the story of Roy and Celestial, a young African-American couple who have been married less than two years when Roy is convicted of, and jailed for, a crime he did not commit. He spends several years in jail, and both Roy and Celestial must adjust to the new reality of a life lived apart.

An American Marriage cover.jpg — An American Marriage

OneWorld, 2018

Tayari Jones

The book rotates round three main narrators – Roy and Celestial, and Andre, Celestial’s friend since childhood. Most of the book is told in straight narrative from their perspectives, but the section while Roy is in jail is told in a series of letters between mainly Roy and Celestial. This was where the audiobook came into its own – the different voices brought to life the heights of emotion that could only be expressed between them in their letter-writing.

From the start, the book implicitly asks questions of the reader. Would you have believed your son, your friend, your lover, if he said he did not commit the crime? As his wife, would you have supported him in the courtroom? Would you stay loyal to him, though your marriage is counted in months rather than years - and the time to be served stretches out in front of you without visible end? I suspect for many of us, the strain of those imbalanced months would quickly tell.

“Marriage is between two people. There is no studio audience”

As you might expect, much of Jones’ skill in the book is in building up a picture of what makes a marriage. No-one ever really knows or understands what’s going on in anyone else’s marriage; but to let us glimpse into Roy and Celestial’s, Jones tells us of childhoods and adolescence, where characters are formed and the foundations are laid. She layers on their early dating experiences and the first months of their relationship. The reader feels the grip of the thousand tiny hooks that bind marriage partners together – the hooks that make staying together in the tough times possible, but which can also be ripped painfully apart when circumstances dictate.

Many people have advice for Roy and Celestial in this book. All have their own experiences that inform what they say; some advice is helpful and much is not. Isn’t it often tempting to pass judgement on other peoples’ relationships? – “she should leave him, I can’t believe she stays”. But how little we ever know of what makes a marriage work.

“Much of life is timing or circumstance; I see that now”

An American Marriage is not in fact about just one marriage; instead we are shown many relationships as foils to Roy and Celestial’s rocky road. There are parents long in love; there are unmarried partners who display more mutual support than most married spouses; there is a couple whose American dream has taken them from working class normalcy to a wealthy life in the neighbourhood ‘big house’. The book shows marriage in all its beautiful, raw, destructive and love-built forms.

“There are too many loose ends in the world, in need of knots”

There is of course also an underlying theme of racial tension in the book – would Roy have been convicted of this crime had he been a white man? Jones does not labour the point, and yet the intersection of race, sex, and class in the book only reinforces the point that, really, so much of what happens to us in life is the product of circumstance, and not our own effort. Roy is the paper boat being tossed on turbulent seas, and it is not hard to understand his anger and desperation to regain control of a life he loved and has lost.

I have perhaps made it sound as if An American Marriage is a bleak or depressing novel. It most assuredly is not; there is a beautiful joy in the book, an eternal belief in love’s power to carry us through the difficult times. For those who believe in the power of marriage, and for those disillusioned by love that is challenged or lost: you will find a story within An American Marriage for you.