The plot is slightly inevitable, but absorbing nonetheless, and very well performed.my only complaint is with the actual alleged crime. I was rooting for all three main characters even though I couldn't imagine that it would turn out well for all of them! In this novel, all three main characters are flawed (though nobody is downright unlikeable) yet you can still relate to each and understand why they are the way they are and do the things they do. Too often these days, authors write unlikable or really flawed narrators but write them in such a way that you can't relate, can't understand.
While Davis was fine I was really craving Bahni Turpin, Angela Dawe, or Robin Miles, all of whom would have brought Celestial to life better.
I wish there had been a different narrator for Celestial. Roy was the most compelling and interesting character to me and the audio narrator bumped it up a notch. Jones managed to take really depressing and difficult subjects (the over incarceration of black men and wrongful conviction alongside the issues of marriage, children, fractured families, racism, and so on) and treat them in such a way that you get it-it's real-but you don't feel like opening a vein. So often, really good authors (often authors of color) are totally overlooked, and you have to do a fair amount of hunting to find them amongst thousands upon thousands of books. I stumbled upon Jones' Silver Sparrow a few years ago and really liked it-more than this one, actually, though I did like this one. Glad such a worthy author got the Oprah bump
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. 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. After five years, Roy's conviction is suddenly overturned, and he returns to Atlanta ready to resume their life together. As Roy's time in prison passes, she is unable to hold on to the love that has been her center. Though fiercely independent, Celestial finds herself bereft and unmoored, taking comfort in Andre, her childhood friend, and best man at their wedding. Roy is arrested and sentenced to 12 years for a crime Celestial knows he didn't commit. But as they settle into the routine of their life together, they are ripped apart by circumstances neither could have imagined. He is a young executive, and she is an artist on the brink of an exciting career. Newlyweds Celestial and Roy are the embodiment of both the American Dream and the New South.
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