5 Thoughts On An American Marriage by Tayari Jones

Sep 21, 2024

Imagine for a minute that you’re a newlywed. You and your wife/husband are visiting his/her family for the Labor day weekend, staying in a small hotel which is really more of a motel you know from your childhood, and then— in the middle of the night, you’ve just made love to your wife/husband, the police kick down the door, pull you out of bed, throw you onto the asphalt outside your hotel/motel, and the next thing you know, you’re sentenced to twelve years in prison for a crime you didn’t commit. With no evidence other than the word of a woman you met earlier that evening on an ice-run who’s certain you were the one who raped her.

This is how Tayari Jones, winner of the Women’s prize for fiction, starts her brilliant novel called An American Marriage.

Thanks goes to

Harun Kewa

for recommending this novel, thereby giving me t~~he kick in the butt I needed~~ a gentle reminding nudge to start reading it. It instantly achieved binge-read status for me, which, to be honest, is rare in these times of digital addiction. I long for a book that can make me forget my phone.

Here’s the back cover copy:

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.

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. An American Marriage is a masterpiece of storytelling, an intimate look deep into the souls of people who must reckon with the past while moving forward—with hope and pain—into the future.

There’s so much I learned from and love about this book.

1. There’s a skill and an art to taking a broad topic such as mass incarceration and weaving it into an intimate and intricate story, and Tayari Jones has mastered both.

Her plot is solid, hitting all the right points—we’re turning page after page to see what happens next. Her characters are complex, ambiguous and, above all, real. There’s a less than perfect marriage, a love triangle and lots of family drama, and before we even know it, without even realizing it, we’re seeing the impact of mass incarceration, we’re seeing the many dimensions of black feminism, we’re seeing the many dimensions of being a black man in America. The many dimensions of being the key here, and what makes the book so powerful.

Here’s what Tayari Jones said in an interview with The Paris Review.

When I first started writing, I was thinking of it as a book about mass incarceration, and mass incarceration is not a plot. It’s not a story. It’s not a character. I was at Harvard doing research on this subject, and I felt like I had a lot of information, but I had not yet found my story because I had to realize that I am a novelist. I’m not a sociologist. I’m not a documentarian. I’m not an ethnographer. And I found the story, actually, through eavesdropping. I overheard a young couple arguing in the mall in Atlanta. The woman, who was splendidly dressed, and the man—he looked okay. But she looked great! And she said to him, “You know you wouldn’t have waited on me for seven years.” And he shot back, “This shit wouldn’t have happened to you in the first place.” And I was like, You know, I don’t know him, but I know she’s probably right. I doubt very seriously that he would wait on her for seven years, and he is probably right that this wouldn’t have happened to her. And I realized that they were at an impasse because she’s talking about the potential for reciprocity and he’s saying this is a moot point. I was intrigued by them, and so I integrated this very personal conflict with the research I had done.

Yay for eavesdropping! You never know what you’ll find. I hold by my opinion that eavesdropping is a crucial skill in the life of a writer. Also, imagine being the young couple at the table and one day finding out that you inspired a winner of the Women’s prize for fiction, and that both Oprah and Obama loved the book.

2. The book has a brilliantly written love-triangle.

If you’re a reader looking for a book with a love-triangle or a writer trying to write one, read An American Marriage. I have a soft spot for plots with a love triangle. Done right, love-triangles have the ability to keep a reader hooked until the very last page. And Tayari Jones certainly does this one right.

In the story, on that fateful night at the Piney Woods Inn, before everything, Roy and Celeste have an argument. He has brought her there to confess a family secret, but she doesn’t take it well, claiming he should have told her something that big from the start.

“Roy, you're doing this on purpose.”
“This? What this?”
“You tell me that were making a family, that I'm the closest person to you, and then you drop a bomb like this.”
“It's not a bomb. What difference does it make?” I flipped it as a rhetorical question, but I craved a real true answer. I needed her to say that it didn't make a difference, that I was myself, not my gnarled family tree.
“It’s not this one thing. It's the phone numbers in your wallet, the way you don't always wear your ring. Then this. As soon as we get over one thing, there's something else. If I didn't know better, I would think that you were trying to sabotage our marriage, the baby, everything.” She said it like it was all my fault, as though it were possible to tango alone.

The first person she calls is Andre, the third vertex in the love triangle. Except we don’t know yet what part he’ll play in the story. All our attention is aimed at the big injustice about to drop, the book’s promise of the premise. And then… we get our first crumb of Andre. Roy tells us, just as he’s about to go and fill his ice-bucket—

I stood up and picked up the plastic ice bucket. “I’ll go fill this up.”
Fifteen minutes is a nice chunk of time to kill. As soon as I was out the door, Celestial was going to call Andre. They met in a playpen when they were too young to even sit up, so they are thick like brother and sister. I know Dre from college, and it was through him that I met Celestial in the first place.

The very next chapter comes in Celeste’s point-of-view. Within only the first 200 words, we meet Andre through her eyes.

I called Andre, and after three rings he picked up and talked me down, sane and civil as always. "Ease up on Roy," he said. "If you lose it every time he tries to come clean, you're encouraging him to lie."
“But,” I said, not ready to let go. “He didn't even—”
“You know I'm right,” he said without being smug. “But what you don't know is that I'm entertaining a young lady this evening.”
“Pardon moi,” I said, happy for him.
“Gigolos get lonely, too,” he said.
I was still grinning when I hung up the phone.
And I was still smiling when Roy appeared at the door with the ice bucket extended in his arms like a bouquet of roses, and by then my anger had cooled like a forgotten cup of coffee.

If that isn’t a loaded character introduction, I’ll eat my shoe.

About a third into the book, we get our first chapter from Andre’s point of view.

This is what it must be like to be married to a widow. You give her bandages for her wounds; you offer comfort when memories sneak up and she cries for what looks like no reason. When she reminisces about the past, you don't remind her of the things she has chosen not to recollect, all the while telling yourself that it's unreasonable to be jealous of a dead man.
But what can I do other than what I've done? I've known Celestial Davenport all my life, and I have loved her at least that long. This is the truth as natural and unvarnished as Old Hickey, the centuries-old tree that grows between our two houses. My affection for her is etched onto my body like the Milky Way birthmark scoring my shoulder blades.

You’re in for a bumpy love-triangle ride.

3. The book is an ode to epistolary story-telling.

A significant portion of the novel is told through the letters that Roy and Celeste send each other while he is in prison. They are a heartbreaking read, and I felt Roy’s feelings of loss and loss of control deeply; he’s only a year and some into his marriage and unable to give his wife what he thinks a wife deserves. At the same time, we have Celeste’s desire to move on with her life. It’s impossible to pick sides. Rooting for one character would mean the other one wouldn’t get what they want.

4. My heart broke when Celeste’s father didn’t take her side.

“Mr. Davenport,” said Andre. “Celestial is that for me. She is the one I want forever.”
“Son,” my father said, gripping the dessert spoon like a pitchfork. “I have one thing to say to you, as a black man: Roy is a hostage of the state. He is a victim of America. The least you could do is unhand his wife when he gets back.”
“Mr. Davenport, with all due respect—”
“What's all this Mr. Davenport this, Mr. Davenport that. This ain't complicated. You want this man to come home after five years in the state penitentiary for some bullshit he didn't even do, and you want him to come back and see his wife with your little ring on her finger and you talking about you love her? I'll tell you what Roy is going to see: he is going to see a wife who wouldn't keep her legs closed and a so-called friend who doesn't know what it is to be a man, let alone a black man.”
My mother was on her feet now. “Franklin, apologize.”
Andre said, “Mr. Davenport, do you hear yourself? Hate me all you want. I came here hoping for your blessing, but I don't need it. But Celestial is your daughter. You can't say things like that about her.”
“Don't cuss me, Daddy,” I said. “Please don't cuss me.”

No matter the situation, there is a devastation in a parent not taking your side. And I felt it strongly here. What made it even more painful, only a few paragraphs earlier, we saw what a daddy’s girl she was.

I turned to Andre, who radiated confident excitement. Then I glanced at Uncle Banks, who was deep into a murmured conversation with Sylvia. Finally I faced my father. For so many years I was Daddy's girl, his little Ladybug. When I married Roy, I wore ballerina flats, not so I would be shorter than Roy but so I wouldn't tower over my father. Even though I insisted that the pastor omit the word obey, for Daddy's sake we kept the line “who gives this woman” so he could say “I do” in his surprisingly deep voice.

5. And, from a parent’s point of view, what struck me while reading, was the wonder, but also the terror that comes with your children being old enough to go out into the world on their own and create a life of their own which you will have very little control over.

It’s what I love most of all about this novel. How Tayari Jones gives every character their grey area. Which in turn gives us the chance to feel what it would feel like in their shoes.

Thank you so much for reading this 5 Thoughts On article. I’d love to know if you’ve read An American Marriage, what particularly stood out to you and whether you loved it as much as I did.