The Long Road Home

Tayari Jones’s An American Marriage is an aha-moment-inducing tour de force—a love story and a stinging indictment of society’s injustices. It’s also Oprah’s new book club pick.

WHENEVER I OPEN a book, I’m embarking on an adventure. Where will it take me? Who will I meet along the way? What will I learn about the world and my place in it? And best of all, will I love it so much I’ll want to choose it for my book club?

In the case of Tayari Jones’s fourth novel, An American Marriage (Algonquin), the answer to that last question was an emphatic yes. After the first few chapters, as I got to know Roy and Celestial and Andre, I forgot they were fictional characters. I found myself in that zone readers yearn for: I wanted to cancel all my plans and curl up with my new friends.

I won’t spoil the experience by giving away too much of the plot; suffice it to say that a wrongful arrest and conviction shatter the lives of the couple at its center, exposing the cracks in the foundation of their relationship and creating new ones where none existed before. The tale unfolds through alternating narrators, each voice as intimate as a confidant; you’re inside the heads and hearts of all three, feeling the unfairness, the righteous anger, the helplessness, the confusion—and also the complexity and joy of love.

When I finished, I immediately began sharing the book with others, and they, too, devoured it, periodically checking in to talk about what might happen next. By the end, we were discussing the goings-on between Roy, Celestial, and Andre as if gossiping about next-door neighbors. It’s among Tayari’s many gifts that she can touch us soul to soul with her words— and that those words are so glorious.