Heartbreak lures in ‘An American Marriage’
Celestial and Roy are still newlyweds when a visit to Roy’s hometown in small-town Louisiana ends with Roy wrongly accused of rape. Tayari Jones’ brilliant, heartbreaking novel An American Marriage (Algonquin, 306 pp., ★★★★) — announced Tuesday as the latest Oprah’s Book Club selection— exposes the intimate toll of an American shame: the unjust imprisonment of black men. Marriage uncovers the truths that are revealed in the nearly invisible cracks that emerge in relationships, and the devastating harm in secrets of omission.
Roy is an up-and-coming business executive in Atlanta, a Morehouse man who thinks he married up. Celestial is the artistic daughter of a scientist-inventor and his wife.
Roy and Celestial are smitten — really, they are, they tell themselves. Yet Roy collects — and Celestial finds — phone numbers from other women. Celestial turns to her childhood best friend, Andre, when she argues with Roy. Apropos of her name, Celestial is the center of each man’s universe.
Jones ( Silver Sparrow) alternates chapters among the three, and the reader’s sympathies shift with each new revelation. Celestial and the imprisoned Roy exchange raw letters that pulse with anguish and yearning. Andre’s self-deprecating asides have the wisdom of Buddhist koans.
While Roy serves his time, Celestial sews life-size dolls. She dresses a doll in prison blues as a political statement. Andre, ever aware he is a secondary planet in Celestial’s orbit, notices that all the dolls look like Roy.
Celestial and Dre become lovers, and her disappointed father blames himself for treating her as a princess. Dre’s father warns him to leave another man’s wife alone — this from the man who abandoned Dre’s mother for another woman. Roy’s father turns to mild subterfuge to help his son win Celestial back.
With spare and shimmering prose that can strike with the shock of a shiv, Jones captures the life-altering losses Roy and Celestial endure in this unforgettable American marriage.