Utterly captivating
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Blurb:
Newlyweds, Celestial and Roy, are the embodiment of both the American Dream and the New South. He is a young executive and she is artist on the brink of an exciting career. They are settling into the routine of their life together, when 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 deeply 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 into the souls of people who must reckon with the past while moving forward- with hope and pain- into the future.
The Review
I've said it before and I'll say it a thousand times more - if you have an amazing plot line, then a book is 90% of the way towards brilliance. And a plot like this is just simple elegance. How can you read a blurb like that and not be hooked in?
A massive strength of this book is that it is largely about the racial bias in the American justice system and yet manages to not always ram it down your throat. It is not preachy in anyway, but you find yourself wondering just how it is possible that the system is so flawed. But what this book also does, is get you to walk further down this road. Not to just consider the initial injustice that has taken place, but its consequences - what follows after someone is convicted of a crime that they did not commit. The ripple effect that this wrongdoing has on all of their lives and how it plays out over the years to come.
'Much of life is timing and circumstance, I see that now.'
This is where the character-based drama in this book really comes into its own. You are utterly hooked into this story of a newlywed couple, torn apart unjustly. You're forced to witness how they both try to adjust somehow to their new circumstances. The initial part of this story is told through letters sent between Celestial and Roy after he starts his prison sentence and we see the sadness and desperation start to settle in for them both.
The rest of the story is told through alternating narratives of the 3 main characters. They are all incredibly well fleshed out, I felt like I understood all 3 of them like close friends. This plot device of one unfortunate, tragic event setting off a chain reaction of events had me totally engrossed. You couldn't help but empathise with these characters, and it had you thinking, 'what if', right alongside them.
I was utterly captivated by this book. The plot is brilliant and the writing is both straight forward and yet somehow lyrical. This quote in particular will stay with me forever:
'There should be a word for this, the way it feels to steal something that's already yours.'
A much deserved winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2019.
Comments