AN AMERICAN MARRIAGE by Tayari Jones

Do we ever know what any marriage is like on the inside? Do we ever closely examine our own marriages/long term relationships? And is a marriage in America any different from one elsewhere? Who would know. Marriages are made of people - people in their enormous and amazing and tragic and hopeful and disillusioned diversity. Here we have a study of such a marriage, a beautifully written and deeply felt story of Celestial and Roy, a young black couple who live in Atlanta, Georgia. They both come from families who have 'made it' in American speak. Roy is hard working, ambitious, entrepreneurial, doing all the right things. Celestial is an artist, making bespoke dolls for other rising middle class black families. They are in their early '30s, recently married, living their lives, still growing and developing together, an incredible future in front of them. Until one night they are  caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, and Roy being the young black man in the wrong place at the wrong time ends up sentenced to prison for 12 years. If this isn't a crisis in a marriage, then what else is.

The marriage unravels. Celestial takes up with Andre, her childhood friend, who is Roy's best friend, and introduced them to each other. Then after 5 years, Roy's wrongful conviction is overturned, and Roy goes home to pick up the pieces with Celestial. You can guess that it is not going to go well. How does a writer deal with such a situation where the reader knows someone is going to lose? But who will it be, and how will it happen. Celestial, Roy and Andre are such real characters, so finely drawn as is the relationships between them. The chapters are told in turn mostly by Celestial and Roy, and in the second half also by Andre as they negotiate their relationships with each other and find a way around all this. Emotions are close to the surface, so mistakes are made, tempers frayed. But at all times, for me, it is so human, so real. This injustice and prison scenario may be unusual, but I expect the love triangle scenario is not, and could happen to any couple. It could happen this way to any couple, but in this story it is happening to a black American couple, which gives the random injustice of it all even greater poignancy and truth,