![]() In fact, we have reason to believe that Roy and Celestial’s marriage is precarious. ![]() Jones’s cleverness is to leave this monolithic fact to function as a sinkhole at the centre of the novel a fundamental instability that threatens everything around it, irrespective of the state of play before it opens up. Jones has said that An American Marriage is a novel in conversation with The Odyssey ![]() Jones neither elaborates on the circumstances of the assault, nor the subsequent trial the reader is simply given to understand that a black man, in the wrong place at the wrong time, will find retribution meted out swiftly and unquestioningly. A woman whom Roy briefly met earlier in the evening while fetching ice has been raped and has identified – with certainty, but no apparent evidence – Roy as the perpetrator. ![]() Recently wed Roy and Celestial are staying in a motel on a visit to Roy’s parents in small-town Louisiana when they are suddenly ripped from their beds and thrown to the asphalt outside, lying in “parallel like burial plots”. It centres on an appalling miscarriage of justice. And one appreciates why the jury picked it from a strong shortlist that included Booker winners Pat Barker and Anna Burns – it is an immensely readable novel, packed with ideas and emotion. ![]() T his is the first of Tayari Jones’s four novels to appear in the UK and her publisher’s confidence has been rewarded earlier this month, An American Marriage won the Women’s prize for fiction, all but guaranteeing Jones a new readership. ![]()
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