From the Bookshelf of Constant Reader…

An American Marriage

Tayari Jones

Start date: July 15, 2019

Finish date: August 1, 2019

Discussion: Reading List

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Reading List

* The Schedule for July through Dec. 2025
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What Members Thought

Apr 07, 2018 Linda rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2018, audio, own, signed, booktopians, arc, fiction, paperback, z18

An engrossing look at a black couple who endure a 5-year separation very early in their marriage. Roy is wrongly accused and found guilty of raping a woman. The book is told through alternating voices of the wife, Celestial (Georgia) and the husband, Roy.
Most memorable quote, Roy asks Celeste if she would have expected him to wait 5 years for her. Her reply, "That would have never happened to me." ...more

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Dec 03, 2017 Dree rated it really liked it

Shelves: african-am-can-diaspora-lit, the-south, women-s-prize-long-short, 2017-reads, tournament-of-books, arc

Black men in America--whether they are college-educated, middle-class, and fully employed or not--are but one arrest, false accusation, and jury trial away from being incarcerated.

But what happens to those they leave behind? In this novel Jones looks at Roy Jr and Celestial, relative newlyweds, middle/upper-middle class Atlantans. Until he is accused and arrested and tried in rural Louisiana, on a trip to visit his parents. He is innocent, but it doesn't really matter. The jury believes the accu ...more

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Jun 12, 2019 Jane rated it really liked it

Shelves: recentfiction, family-story, womans-story

At first I felt as though the characters' conversations felt stilted, inauthentic. Gradually, I grew to care about and believe their talk. The plot is intense; the sense of longing for home and family is intense. I really loved Celestial (Georgia). She changes and tries to be true to herself and her creativity, as well as her relationships. This is an American story, one in which race changes everything. The sentences and language are explosive rather than elegant and I grew to love that.

Here's ...more

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Sep 09, 2021 William rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2021, 2024

Reading this great book, I felt at the willing mercy of a great master storyteller. I wanted to go wherever she wanted to take me. By narrating it in the first person from the perspective of the major characters, we are in effect a peripheral character in the evolving sequence of events. It is easy to put yourself in the shoes of any one of them and feel what they are feeling.
The book beautifully looks at themes of race and racial justice, love, marriage and how relationships adjust to circumst ...more

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Dec 08, 2019 Cdrueallen rated it liked it

This novel set mainly in the milieu of the black bourgeoisie in Atlanta contains wonderful portraits of men in the full glory of their loving/controlling/nurturing/violent ambivalence. Roy, the main male character, is especially compelling as climbs the class ladder but comes tumbling back down to where he started through no fault of his own. Unfortunately the female characters are annoyingly passive, bland, and conventional. Not what I was expecting from a female author.

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Jun 10, 2021 Paige rated it liked it

3.5? Definitely engrossing and a good book in a lot of ways, but I felt like it was missing...something. It was a little too neat, maybe? Will be having a book club discussion of this book, so I might be swayed to a higher rating.

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