Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid

As soon as I finished Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid, I texted Bestest Friend and my sister-in-law and demanded that they put it on their reading lists.  I liked just about everything about it from the writing to the themes to the characterizations. As I write this, it only has a 3.84 rating on Goodreads and I think that is unfair. The book is simply smarter than the reviewers.

Basically, it tells the story of two women. Emira Tucker babysits for Alix Chamberlain.  Emira is black and Alix is white and one night, Emira takes one of the Chamberlain kids to a grocery store where the security guard thinks Emira is kidnapping the child.  The rest of the novel is fallout from that event.

Characters: Alix and Emira are such complicated figures. Emira has like three selves: the Emira who is sweet and patient with the children, the one who is professional and interacts with white people, and the Emira who hangs out with her friends.  Alix is a "woke" white woman trying to make what she thinks are good decisions for Emira without actually consulting Emira.  They are not perfect, but they each do what they think is the best, but the outcomes aren't always what they thought would happen.  These are complicated women and Reid's character development is spot-on.

Writing about how white people frequently try to do things to help black people and end up making things worse is kind of a tricky thing to do without making white people seem to lack any emotional competency, being preachy, or ignoring a point of view, but Reid straddles the line and makes it look easy.

Writing: Reid writes in a breezy style that makes you think you're going to be reading a sort of tell-all from the nanny's point of view at first, but it quickly sinks into questions about race, class, and the use of technology in 2020 America.  I was surprised at how quickly I was invested in the story and how quickly I finished the novel.  I was also surprised at how grim I found the ending - I definitely want a follow-up to know how Emira and Alix's oldest daughter are doing in twenty years.  There are a number of criticisms on Goodreads about how bad the dialogue is, but I just can't agree with those criticisms. Reid writes like how people talk!  That's good writing, even if it's jolting when the rest of the novel is written in perfect grammar.

Nitpicks: The ending undid a lot of work in creating the character of Alix - it made her a flat-out villain instead of a well-meaning woman who just doesn't know how much she's screwing up other people's lives.  The secondary characters were hardly developed at all, including Alix's husband and Emira's friends, but I actually think that's probably okay since it would have added unnecessary length to the volume.  

I would strongly recommend this one. In the United States in 2020, we deserve it to one another to support artists of color, especially when they're aiming their message straight to us.  Listen and amplify their voices.