Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid

 

I picked up Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid based on the fact that pretty much everyone was talking about it when it came out. It was all over the internet, was featured on a prominent display at the bookstore, and was even selected as part of Reese Witherspoon's book club. I'm always interested in checking out what everyone else seems to be reading, and the summary sounded like something I'd enjoy, so I decided to give it a go. In a classic move, I put it on my shelf and never ended up reading it. This year, I put it on my 22 in 2022 list so I could finally see if it could possibly live up to all the hype it received.  

The plot of the novel follows two women and the chapters alternate between their perspectives. The first is Emira Tucker, a twenty-five year old black woman living in Philadelphia. She's not quite sure what she wants to do with her life and works a few part time, low-paying jobs to make ends meet. One of those jobs is babysitting a little girl named Briar for a wealthy white family. She actually likes her babysitting job quite a bit. She loves Briar and can't imagine not being a part of her life, but she also is feeling a lot of pressure to find herself full time employment that will provide her with health insurance and more stability.

The other woman in the story is Alix Chamberlain, a wealthy white woman who works as a blogger and influencer. She is Briar's mother and Emira's employer. On the surface, she seems to have the perfect life. Internally, however, Alix is somewhat dissatisfied with her current situation. She moved to Philadelphia to have more space for her growing family, but she misses living in New York and being able to fully throw herself into every exciting opportunity that came her way. She does love her husband and Briar though, and is a good mother. Emira is absolutely indispensable to her and she trusts her implicitly. 

Their story begins when Emira goes through an awful ordeal one night while babysitting Briar. During a trip to the grocery store, another shopper, alarmed at seeing a black woman walking around with a white child, alerts the security guard. Emira is accused of kidnapping Briar and is detained until Briar's father shows up to confirm her identity. A bystander films the entire incident and sends the footage to Emira, but she chooses not to do anything with it. She just wants to return back to her normal life, but that soon proves to be impossible. The events of that night have a ripple effect and stir up all sorts of emotions in Emira and Alix. The ways they interact with each other begin to change, and both end up discovering things about themselves and each other that will change the course of both of their lives forever.

I wanted to like this novel more than I actually did. I didn't think it was bad, but it wasn't as good as I was assuming it would be either. What it came down to for me was a lack of...something. Subtlety? Nuance? Complexity? I'm not sure which, and it's a shame because the story presents a truly interesting dilemma for Emira. After the grocery story incident, she ends up being caught in the middle of two well-meaning, but ultimately racist, white people. On one side is Alix, her employer. Emira desperately needs to hang onto the salary she provides. However, Alix's behavior to her become very maternal after the incident, and she starts to take on that white savior role. She starts to covertly exert more control over Emira and attempts to influence her decisions. She is convinced she knows what's best for her and isn't above sneaking around and doing some pretty unethical things under the guise of "protection." On the other side is Emira's boyfriend, Kelley. He is outraged on her behalf, and his feelings are too much. He cares about what happened at the grocery store more than Emira does and tries to get her to be more angry about it and to release the video. He can't understand the ways in which that move might negatively impact her and his lack of understanding about that is a betrayal of the privilege he's enjoyed all his life. He is also oddly into black people. He seemingly only has black friends and only dates black women. There are questions about him fetishizing the culture. Alix and Kelley continually push and pull Emira in different directions, and both believe that are totally in the right about what they feel and both feel like the other is racist. It was really a fascinating dichotomy. That tug-of-war was the most interesting part of the story to me, and was a powerful example of the ways white people continue to misunderstand and harm black people, even without meaning to. 

Where I felt Reid made a misstep with this dilemma was in how Emira reacted to it. She was essentially oblivious to all of it. She didn't look deeper into the conflicting views of her boss and her boyfriend, and didn't seem to get how both of them were harming her. Things would just happen and she would react, but it never really felt like she noticing all the different layers of white nonsense swirling around her. I wanted to hear more of her thoughts on it. Without her analysis, it felt like an important piece was missing. I wanted her to interact more with the hypocrisy that I felt should have been evident to her.

The ending of the novel was a disappointment to me as well. I didn't think the decisions Emira and her friend made were realistic and there was a last minute twist that really undercut the complexity of one of the characters. I honestly wished Reid had left out that reveal entirely, because it didn't make much sense and ended up undoing some of the questions her story asked.

Despite all that though, I still mildly enjoyed Such a Fun Age. It was worth reading for the push-and-pull between the main characters, even if the reader was largely left to interpret those issues on their own. The characters were complex and the writing was easy to read. This was Reid's first novel, and I do think that she's going to have a very bright future as a writer. She seems to have a knack for coming up with interesting questions about race and the way people from different backgrounds interact with each other. This story didn't quite live up to its full potential for me, but it still had interesting things to say and was worth the time.    

Challenge Tally

22 in 2022: 15/22

Total Books Read in 2022: 71