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An American Marriage: A Novel Hardcover – February 6, 2018

4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 61,516 ratings

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THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!

OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB 2018 SELECTION

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2018 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION

“One of my favorite parts of summer is deciding what to read when things slow down just a bit, whether it’s on a vacation with family or just a quiet afternoon . . .
An American Marriage by Tayari Jones is a moving portrayal of the effects of a wrongful conviction on a young African-American couple.” —Barack Obama

“Haunting . . . Beautifully written.” —
The New York Times Book Review
 
“Brilliant and heartbreaking . . . Unforgettable.” —
USA Today
 
“A tense and timely love story . . . Packed with brave questions about race and class.” —
People
 
“Compelling.” —
The Washington Post
 
“Epic . . . Transcendent . . . Triumphant.” —
Elle

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 forwardwith hope and paininto the future.
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From the Publisher

An American Marriage: A Novel

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Compelling . . . spun with tender patience by Jones, who cradles each of these characters in a story that pulls our sympathies in different directions. She never ignores their flaws, their perfectly human tendency toward self-justification, but she also captures their longing to be kind, to be just, to somehow behave well despite the contradictory desires of the heart.”
—Ron Charles, Washington Post

“Tayari Jones has emerged as one of the most important voices of her generation.”
Essence

“In this unforgettable novel, Tayari Jones tackles hard questions about pride, betrayal, and our capacity to forgive.”
Real Simple

"Novelist Jones writes brilliantly about expectations and loss and racial injustice, and how love must evolve when our best laid plans go awry."
—Esquire.com

"Tayari Jones provides an essential contemporary portrait of a marriage in this searing novel. An American Marriage gorgeously evokes the New South as it explores mass incarceration on a personal level."
Entertainment Weekly

“I love An American Marriage and I’m so excited for this book to be in the world. Tayari’s novel is timely, thoughtful, and beautifully written. Reading it, I found myself angry as hell, laughing out loud, choking up and cheering. A gem of a book.”
—Jacqueline Woodson, author of Another Brooklyn and Brown Girl Dreaming

“Tayari Jones is blessed with vision to see through to the surprising and devastating truths at the heart of ordinary lives, strength to wrest those truths free, and a gift of language to lay it all out, compelling and clear. That has been true from her very first book, but with An American Marriage that vision, that strength, and that truth-telling voice have found a new level of artistry and power.”
Michael Chabon, author of Moonglow

“Tayari Jones is a great storyteller. An American Marriage holds the reader from first page to last, with her compassionate observation, her clear-eyed insight and her beautifully written and complex characters. Jones understands love and loss and writes with passion and precision about the forces that move us all from one to another.”
Amy Bloom, author of Lucky Us

An American Marriage asks hard questions about injustice and betrayal, and answers them with a heartbreaking and genuinely suspenseful love story in which nobody's wrong and everybody's wounded. Tayari Jones has written a complex and important novel about people trapped in a tragic situation, struggling to reconcile their responsibilities and desires.”
Tom Perrotta, author of Mrs. Fletcher

“Tayari Jones’ An American Marriage is a stunning epic love story filled with breathtaking twists and turns, while bursting with realized and unrealized dreams. Skillfully crafted and beautifully written, An American Marriage is an exquisite, timely, and powerful novel that feels both urgent and indispensable.”
—Edwidge Danticat, author of Breath, Eyes, Memory

“This novel is peopled by vividly realized, individual characters and driven by interpersonal drama, but it is also very much about being black in contemporary America. This is, at its heart, a love story, but a love story warped by racial injustice. And, in it, Jones suggests that racial injustice haunts the African-American story. Subtle, well-crafted, and powerful.”
Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Layered like Pearl Cleage’s What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day, this title will appeal to all readers of contemporary fiction.”
Library Journal (starred review)

"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."
—TheRumpus

“ . . . nuanced and evocative . . . An American Marriage is a compelling exploration of the thorny conflicts that drive us apart and bind us, the distorting weight of racism, and how commitment looks across time – and generations.”
—BBC.com

" . . . breathtaking . . . Jones is a master with words and An American Marriage is the wordsmith at the top of her game."
—B*tch Media

" . . . heart-wrenching . . . An American Marriage poses profound questions about what we owe each other, and what injustices we allow to persist."
Huffington Post

"One of America's finest writers, Tayari Jones has offered up another masterpiece with her latest novel, a tremendously powerful story about love, injustice, inequality, and strength. An American Marriage reveals how quickly dreams can be derailed due to systemic malignant forces all around us. It's a novel of vision and grace, and it will bury itself in your consciousness."
Nylon.com

“Tayari Jones is a wonderful storyteller. Anyone who has read Jones’s earlier works (Leaving Atlanta, The Untelling, Silver Sparrow) is familiar with her strong authorial voice and her careful construction of each sentence, paragraph, and chapter. Her attention to craft is paramount. An American Marriage is an engrossing novel about many things, but at its heart, it’s a love story, a uniquely American love story.”
Ploughshares

"It’s always an event when there’s new writing from Tayari Jones . . . "
ElectricLIterature.com

“Jones crafts an affecting tale that explores marriage, family, regret, and other feelings made all the more resonant by her well-drawn characters and their intricate conflicts of heart and mind.”
Booklist

“Jones (Silver Sparrow) lays bare the devastating effects of wrongful imprisonment in this piercing tale of an unspooling marriage . . . Masterfully executed . . . Jones uses her love triangle to explore simmering class tensions and reverberating racial injustice in the contemporary South, while also delivering a satisfying romantic drama.”
­–Publishers Weekly

“Tayari Jones displays tremendous writing prowess with An American Marriage, an enchanting novel that succeeds at every level. From the very start, An American Marriage pulls the reader in with gorgeous prose. Even beyond its plot, the story soars. It doesn’t just focus on one instance of a marriage; it explores philosophical and political quandaries, including generational expectations of men and women, the place of marriage in modern society, systemic racism, toxic masculinity, and more. It does so in a gentle, subtle way, avoiding didacticism as it nudges the reader to question their own conventions and ideals. There are rarely novels as timely or fitting as An American Marriage. It brings abstract ideas about race and love down to the material level. The story is gripping, and the characters are unforgettable.”
Foreword Reviews (starred review)

“Tayari Jones weaves a moving love story in her new novel, An American Marriage.”
Southern Living

“[A] very insightful, touching story about contemporary relationships.”
Liberty Hardy, Book Riot

About the Author

Tayari Jones is the author of four novels, including Silver SparrowThe Untelling, and Leaving Atlanta. Jones holds degrees from Spelman College, Arizona State University, and the University of Iowa. A winner of numerous literary awards, she is a professor of creative writing at Emory University. Visit her website at www.tayarijones.com.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ 1616201347
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Algonquin Books; First Edition (February 6, 2018)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9781616201340
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1616201340
  • Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ HL770L
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.1 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1 x 9 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 61,516 ratings

About the author

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Tayari Jones
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Tayari Jones is the author of the novels Leaving Atlanta, The Untelling, Silver Sparrow, and An American Marriage (Algonquin Books, February 2018). Her writing has appeared in Tin House, The Believer, The New York Times, and Callaloo. A member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, she has also been a recipient of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, Lifetime Achievement Award in Fine Arts from the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, United States Artist Fellowship, NEA Fellowship and Radcliffe Institute Bunting Fellowship. Silver Sparrow was named a #1 Indie Next Pick by booksellers in 2011, and the NEA added it to its Big Read Library of classics in 2016. Jones is a graduate of Spelman College, University of Iowa, and Arizona State University. An Associate Professor in the MFA program at Rutgers-Newark University, she is spending the 2017-18 academic year as the Shearing Fellow for Distinguished Writers at the Beverly Rogers, Carol C. Harter Black Mountain Institute at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
4.3 out of 5
61,515 global ratings
An American Marriage is an exploration of systemic racism, friendship, trust, and heartbreak.
4 Stars
An American Marriage is an exploration of systemic racism, friendship, trust, and heartbreak.
This one really had me in my feelings, especially in the end! Jones’s writing is so unique and poetic. She finds exquisite ways to say the simplest things without any cliches. It wasn't a super quick read for me, and I found there were a few slow parts, but the beauty in her writing truly makes the story satisfying to read. Jones had me witness to each character’s most intimate moments especially from reading their beautiful, painful love letters. It almost felt like a violation of their privacy! Even up until the very end, the reactions of the all characters were all so honest, solid, and deeply genuine. It’s about human connection. We crave affection and physical contact from those we love. When we don't have that, we grow apart. That divide creates heartache, anger, sadness, hope... but “You can never un-love someone.” It’s raw, unapologetic, and unforgettable.
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Top reviews from the United States

Reviewed in the United States on February 9, 2018
I know this book was just published but I can't believe more people haven't read it, and not just because Oprah endorsed it. THIS IS ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS I'VE READ IN AGES!!! I couldn't put this book down. I felt like I personally knew these characters and I know a book has captured my heart when I start talking back to the characters (via notes in my Kindle).

This is one of those stories where you feel like you're watching a bad car accident about to happen and all you can do is brace yourself because you see it coming, but you can't prevent it. This is a love triangle, and the story is told from the perspective of the three people involved, Celestial, the woman, Roy, her husband, and Andre, Celestial BFF. Of course, Andre has actually been in love with Celestial his whole life but she just thinks they're buddies. Roy and Celestial have been married for 18 months and their marriage is like most marriages pretty early on, they have many ups and a few downs, but there is no way for them to know if they can weather a major storm. Well, they don't have to just deal with a storm, they are thrown into a tsunami when Roy is arrested for rape.

The rest of the story gives the perspective of the three characters as they deal with Roy's arrest, conviction and attempts to exonerate him from jail. Along the way they learn some hard truths about themselves and about relationships, not just with each other, but with extended family members as well. This book raises some really important questions: what does it really mean to hang in there, for better or worse? What if the worse seems to be outweighing the bad by a mile? For those who are incarcerated, is it fair to ask and expect your partner to wait for you, no matter what? Should you let them go and let them move on? Is it infidelity if your partner is completely unavailable and you are married in name only?
There are no easy answers to this question, but it was poetic to watch the characters try to address them, each in their own way.

The author has such a wonderful way with language; one of my favorite lines in the book is when Roy wryly notes: "If you have a woman, you recognize when you have said the wrong thing. Somehow she rearranges the ions in the air and you can't breathe as well". YES, I LOVE IT!! She also does an excellent job with nuancing the cultural issues involved with the incarceration of black men, but she isn't preachy or on a soap box, the issues of racism and sexism is woven into the fabric of the story so they naturally evolve.

This is one of those books that you can't put down and then you feel a sense of loss when it's over. I rarely read books more than once but this book is going to be one of those classics that you will want to return to over and over again. Bravo!
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Reviewed in the United States on March 9, 2024
What would you do? You are happily married for only 18 mths your husband wrongly accused of rape and sentenced to 12 years in prison. Do you sit still or move on? This book had me hating Dre he was always on the sideline waiting and took the opportunity. I can't agree or disagree with Celeste. Little Roy I can only feel bad because he literally was given the wrong cards all around. Then he turned it all around. Heartbreak can lead to fresh starts

Tayari did an amazing job writing this book. It shows what can happen when your life is just completely turned upside down
3 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on October 24, 2018
The beauty of this powerful and compelling novel is its fine, sensitive balance between the universal experience of falling in and out of love, and the specific perspective of its circle of black characters dealing with the painful and familiar trappings of racism and disproportionate justice in the “New South” of Atlanta, Georgia.

As a white reader both aware of yet culturally outside the black experience, I was swept into the narrative by Tayari’s Jones’ evocative storytelling style—with its rich sense of place and character—the propelling thrust of the unfolding drama, and her piercing illumination of the day-to-day causticness and danger of being black in America and all that that encompasses.

We initially experience the joy and sensuality of Celestial and Roy finding each other at the arching moment of their personal and career success, only to have that hopeful trajectory interrupted by a false accusation of rape and the unfathomable conviction that sends Roy to prison for decades. We experience with them the pain and unknowingness about whether or not their new marriage can survive until he is (hopefully) released on appeal, as we witness Celestial’s slow, almost inevitable turn to their longtime and mutual friend, Andre, as both a comfort and a new love.

There is inevitable judgment from family members, impact on her burgeoning artistic career (she makes one-of-a-kind dolls), and the ever-present guilt of not being able to sustain what had only begun, but Jones’s empathy for her characters makes it possible for us to relate to Roy’s anger and anticipation, while also being moved by Celestial’s struggle, Andre’s dilemma, and their ultimate acceptance that life has to move on, no matter the cost. When Roy is unexpectedly released, they are all faced with the fallout of decisions made in his absence; our choice as readers is to either take a side, or allow a sense of universal compassion to open us up to the unfolding conclusion.

It is an emotional, enlightening, painful journey, whether the focus is on true love or the injury of racism, and by the story’s end, I felt as though I had been on that journey with people who mattered. A beautiful book.
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Top reviews from other countries

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Luly
5.0 out of 5 stars Llegó bien
Reviewed in Mexico on March 19, 2024
Llegó el día que dijeron que llegaba,

Excelente historia, me encantó el libro, termina bien, con una historia realista.
Christie Dakin
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book!
Reviewed in Canada on April 6, 2023
This book surprised me. I bought it because I am part of a book club but I didn't know much about it. The book is written in a unique manner and I am totally enjoying it. I highly recommend it!
Glows2
5.0 out of 5 stars Very compelling, emotional and well written
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 30, 2022
I read this book and it ticked so many boxes for me. Compelling characterisation, flawed and plausible protagonists, a well paced plot and cultural references and implied social commentary that enlighten those of us not brought up in America. The characters are a major strength, of course some you like more than others, but you just can't stop thinking about them and willing them to get the best outcome for themselves. The fact that one character's happiness could be another character's despair makes the book so riveting. The pathos at the heart of this book is breathtaking and I found it hard to stop reading.

Just as in life a mistake in memory, identity or being in the wrong place at the wrong time can change the course of your life, this is what happened here and Roy Junior and Celestial suffered the consequences. I loved the story of their flawed love and the way it was tried and tested. The technique of using letters to convey their commitment, chaos and confusion was powerful. The trial gave just the amount of detail needed to make the story about the failings in the judicial system in America and how it can be flawed and stacked against African Americans but this a backdrop, don't expect a crime thriller. 'An American Marriage' is the story of family connections and the quest for love and connection. This is what made this book one of the best I have read. If a writer succeeds in making me care about the characters, think about society, learn about unfamiliar lives and culture, then it's a roaring success in my view. To achieve this without an overly sentimental or didactic tone takes skill and verve as a writer. I found it an emotional and absorbing book. An outstanding and memorable book, my first from this writer and I'm about to order another Tayari Jones novel. A complete triumph , I highly recommend it.
3 people found this helpful
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Kristina Kmieliauskaite
5.0 out of 5 stars Liked it!
Reviewed in Germany on January 29, 2021
Really enjoyed the plot and how it was written. Easy to read, took me 4 days to finish the boo.
Lucía
5.0 out of 5 stars Reseña
Reviewed in Spain on July 29, 2020
📝«You can never really unlove somebody. Maybe it changes shape, but it’s there.»

Este libro habla de tantas cosas a la vez que es difícil hacer una reseña que le haga justicia. Partimos de que los protagonistas son afroamericanos en el Sur de EEUU donde desde se puede ver la brutalidad policial y la injusticia de un sistema en el que mete en la cárcel a alguien que es inocente.

La autora nos deleita con narrativa sencilla y sin grandes adornos que va al grano, pero que está llena de dialogo que te hace sentir los personajes como tuyos y, con ellxs, su sufrimiento. Y es que en realidad este es un libro que habla del sufrimiento no solo por la injusticia sino también por la vida y por los caminos en que esta nos lleva. De seguir adelante cada uno a su manera. Sientes tanto a los personajes que es imposible buscar culpables y, al ponerte en su lugar dudas qué es lo que habrías hecho tu. El final impecable en mi opinión. Una lectura de diez. Tengo muchas ganas de leer más obras de @tayari.

👉Súper consejo: Si entendéis el inglés os recomiendo encarecidamente escuchar el audiolibro a la vez que lees el libro en físico. Los narradores son espectaculares y hacen de los diálogos una delicia.
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