Rating: 2/5
Review:
Not for me
I’m in the minority about this one, because I didn’t think much
of An American Marriage. It started well enough but I got very
bogged down and I’m afraid I gave up around page 150 and didn’t
finish it.
The story is of Roy
and Celestial, a black American couple and their friend Andre, who is
there largely to provide a love triangle. The opening, narrated
first by Roy, then by Celestial recounts their stormy but passionate
marriage and then Roy’s unjust, racist conviction for a crime of
which he is innocent. We then get an exchange of letters, mainly
between Roy and Celestial, as Roy serves his time, and this is where
things began to go badly wrong for me. I didn’t really believe in
the characters, their writing styles didn’t convince me at all and
all the voices sounded too similar for any realism. I also thought
that, having made its initial, powerful point about the threat to
black people in the USA, it descended into rather bland soap opera
and, frankly, I lost interest.
I’m sorry to
criticise, but this simply didn’t do it for me. Other contemporary
authors write more powerfully about the experience of black people in
the USA while also making their books compulsively readable; I’m
thinking of Paul Beatty, Joe Ide, Attica Locke and others. For me,
this isn’t in the same league and I’m afraid I can’t recommend
An American Marriage.
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