An American Marriage fails to do justice to injustice [review]

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones

An American Marriage was on multiple “must read” lists the year it was published.

Former US President Barak Obama apparently said it was one of his favourite books of the year. Jones then achieved the Holy Grail when her novel was selected for Oprah Winfrey’s Book Club (inclusion in which is guaranteed to generate a major hike in sales).

The novel subsequently won the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2019. 

What seems to have appealed most is the way An American Marriage tackles the effects of racial injustice but from perspective of how it threatens to destroy a relationship. The Women’s Prize for Fiction judges called it an “exquisite” novel, “a story of love, loss and loyalty, the resilience of the human spirit painted on a big political canvas – that shines a light on today’s America. “

The relationship in focus is that of Celestial and Roy. They are a young middle-class African-American couple who’ve been married for a year.

There have been some ups and downs as in all marriages, or as Celestial describes it, their marriage is “a fine spun tapestry, fragile but fixable.”  Generally though life is looking pretty good.

Roy’s a sales rep for a textbook company and seems to have a promising career ahead of him. She’s an artist specialising in custom-made baby dolls and hoping to open her own shop.

It takes just 15 minutes one night to turn all their plans upside down.

On a trip to visit his parents in Louisiana, they spend the night at a motel. They argue, he goes outside to cool off but is back in 15 minutes. Later that night police break down the door of their room and haul Roy into custody on charge of raping a fellow guest. He’s sentenced to 12 years in prison.

Incarceration for a crime both know Roy did not commit, puts the marriage under strain. When he’s freed eventually he’s ready to pick up the marriage where they left off. But Celestial has found love in another quarter.

Wrongful conviction

Jones sets a fast pace at the start of An American Marriage.

One chapter is all it takes to get Roy into jail. There’s no time wasted on recounting his arrest, questioning by police or a trial. Instead we get drawn straight into the effect this wrongful conviction has on the young people.

Jones relates this through three narrators: Celestial, Roy, and Andre, a childhood friend who later becomes something more. A large proportion of the early narrative comes in the form of letters exchanged between Celestial and Roy.

And that was where I experienced my first difficulty with this book.

Flaws in An American Marriage

The letters simply didn’t feel authentic to me because the writing style is belaboured. It would be far more natural for a twenty-something year old to write  “I’ve never seen even seen one” rather than “I have never ….” or to say “then I’d know” rather than “then I would know what to do….”   Roy’s letters in particular  felt like correspondence to a stranger rather than to a wife.

When we discussed this at a book club meeting, a few members commented that the stilted style probably reflects the fact Roy knows that prisoners’ letters are vetted. It’s a fair point but I still found these letters irritating at times.

Equally irritating was the author’s tendency to include platitudes throughout the book. This one for example:

“A marriage is more than your heart, it’s your life.”

Or how about

“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…”

Commentary on race and injustice

On one level An American Marriage is intended as a state-of-the-nation kind of book; a commentary on race and justice in twenty-first century America.  It’s clear that Roy’s ethnicity plays a significant part in the miscarriage of justice he experiences. On another level it’s an examination of what happens when a marriage is put to the severest of tests.

Initially both are hopeful about the future and try hard to keep things as they were. Celestial wants to recount word for word, their last conversation before his arrest so that “we can pick up where we left off.” But their optimism wanes, the affection dwindles and  bitterness sweeps in. The question in the final chapters is whether the marriage can ever be put back together.

An American Marriage has many of the elements that would make for an excellent piece of fiction but it never delivers. The injustice issue is never explored to any depth so we’re left to focus on the marriage and the individuals within that relationship. Interesting but not rivetting.

I can understand why this book has resonated with many readers. But I don’t think it’s special enough  to have won the Women’s Prize. Certainly not when the truly remarkable novel  Milkman by Anna Burns is in the frame.

Tayari Jones: Key Facts  

• Tayari Jones was born in Atlanta, Georgia.
• She is currently a member of the English faculty at Emory University in the city.
• She had three novels published before An American Marriage.
• Her  debut novel, Leaving Atlanta, was written when she was a graduate student. It’s a coming-of-age story set against the backdrop of the Atlanta Child Murders of 1979-81. 
• Her second novel The Untelling and her third Silver Sparrow are  also set in Atlanta.