Written by contributor Amy Jane Lehan
I need to preface this entire review with the fact that I was a bit nervous to review this because one of the main themes of the book is race and I would hate to offend any people of colour due to any unintentional ignorance.
With the fun and flirty title, you would be forgiven for assuming this was a lightweight book. Our story follows the lives of Emira, a young black woman struggling with who she wants to be in life and Alix, outwardly all together, successful, and in control but constantly wanting to be more. Emira is 25, she has attended college, and can type 125 words per minute. She has a tight friend group, a lot of self-confidence, and absolutely zero idea what to do with her life. While her friends are making career strides and moving towards being “real adults”, to make ends meet in addition to two days a week of transcription work, she babysits for Alix. While there are two children to care for, Catherine is an infant, so the primary child is little Briar. Blonde hair, blue eyes with endless questions and anxiety, Briar is an absolute delight to read and will leave your heart aching come the final pages. The bond between Emira and Briar is incredibly pure, more mother and child than part time sitter to a charge. Emira loves Briar and all her quirks, wanting to enrich her world and just love her.
Alix Chamberlain writes letters to get what she wants in life. When she was younger, she started to write to companies to get free things and would post about them online, building herself into a one-woman brand with the goal of empowering women. Preceding the birth of their second child, Alix and her husband, Peter, make the move from New York City to Pennsylvania. From the outside, or the little Instagram photos rather, Alix has her life together. Her husband is reasonably successful as a television anchor, they have a nice house, and two little girls: baby Catherine and just turned three Briar. Using her lifetime of letters, Alix secures herself a book deal for them and hires Emira to regularly babysit so she can write. After Peter makes a remark on air with racist undertones, they find their house egged late one night, a broken window, and the need to contact the police.
Alix calls Emira and asks her to please take Briar for an hour or so, despite the late hour, so she doesn’t have to see the police. Emira agrees, explaining to Alix she has had two drinks and is not “dressed like a babysitter” due to being at the birthday of her friend. Alix absolutely does not care and just wants Briar out of the way so Emira makes her way to the Chamberlain house. At eleven at night this young, party ready young black woman takes Briar to a local supermarket to kill time. Briar likes to look at nuts and smell tea bags, so ideal place for her. Some impromptu dancing, a security guard, a concerned citizen and a monied white man with his camera on become the ingredients for an event that takes mere pages of the book but is the thing to knock this story onto a path I didn’t fully anticipate. It all felt utterly real, down to the way Emira brushed the entire event off and didn’t want it to become a “thing” in her life, because being slighted due to her skin tone is her everyday reality.
After hearing what transpired, Alix becomes fixated with Emira to the point of obsession, with Alix even acknowledging to herself that it is crush like. She tries to befriend her, takes to stealing glances at her phone to read her messages, justifying this to herself by saying she never tries to unlock the phone and ultimately seeing Emira as a project she is constantly thinking about. Her tolerance and indifference to Briar is cleverly written. Her individual interactions with her eldest daughter as standalone moments don’t say much, but the further you read, the more obvious it becomes. Briar is an inquisitive, talkative child with plenty of quirks and fixations. Described as having a raspy voice and a never-ending supply of things to prattle on about, Alix, while I don’t doubt loves Briar, struggles with her and favours baby Catherine blatantly who is content and quiet. Fundamentally, Alix isn’t a bad person, however she feels representative of a lot of white woman in similar circumstances, yet is more concerned with how it makes her look than actually making strides towards any real world change. She doesn’t think the of the end goal being; how does this help others, it all comes back to what Alix can get from it in some way, even though she doesn’t see it that way.
A pivotal part of this story rests heavily on an ever so slightly far-fetched coincidence when Emira’s boyfriend, Kelley; white, successful and a handful of years older, turns out to be a person from Alix’s past. Alix is immediately dismayed by this revelation to the point that she doesn’t notice Briar becoming unwell, literally at the dinner table, due to being too caught up in her own thoughts, fixated on the idea that Kelley is only dating Emira because she is black. The interactions between Emira and Kelley felt authentic, with Kelley having genuine affection for Emira, and her for him in return. At one point, she speaks of a future between them and how it would be for him, would he take their son to have his hair done, explain how to act around law enforcement simply because of his skin colour, things Kelley wouldn’t have experienced first-hand. Now, you can’t really discuss social class without talking about race but any issues with the progression of their relationship felt more about class than skin. Emira, about to be without health insurance and struggling to cover rent whilst there is Kelley who has a secure job with a fancy apartment in a good area. They are beyond living in different postcodes, they live in separate worlds with a very real monetary ravine between them.
As this book moves towards the final pages, we see Alix make bold decisions with real consequences for all involved when things don’t go, again, how she envisions. The grand finale felt a teensy bit out of place with the rest of the book, just a touch more hurried though the circumstances are in fact quite fast paced due to what happens. Emira manages to hold her own, it isn’t a happily ever after in the traditional Disney sense (Briar will absolutely bruise your soul), but the way this book settles is authentic and satisfying.
Class and race walk hand in hand throughout this book, but never in a way that felt over the top or really thrust in your face. Kiley Reid has a unique way of telling a story, undoubtedly drawing on her own experiences as a nanny, in addition to being a woman of colour. It is fleshed out and complex without spelling out what you’re meant to think or feel, simply invoking genuine emotions. Her style of writing is so engaging this book is almost impossible to put down, flowing beautifully between dual point of views there is enough detail about the background characters that they didn’t feel flat, the dialogue is believable and appropriate for the different character interactions. However, the true magic here is how one event at the beginning of this tale, that when you read it feels like it can be its own whole different story, becomes the underpinning for so much more. From the first word to the last, this is a true triumph.
Such A Fun Age is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers.
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Synopsis | Goodreads
A striking and surprising debut novel from an exhilarating new voice, Such a Fun Age is a page-turning and big-hearted story about race and privilege, set around a young black babysitter, her well-intentioned employer, and a surprising connection that threatens to undo them both.
Alix Chamberlain is a woman who gets what she wants and has made a living showing other women how to do the same. A mother to two small girls, she started out as a blogger and has quickly built herself into a confidence-driven brand. So she is shocked when her babysitter, Emira Tucker, is confronted while watching the Chamberlains’ toddler one night. Seeing a young black woman out late with a white child, a security guard at their local high-end supermarket accuses Emira of kidnapping two-year-old Briar. A small crowd gathers, a bystander films everything, and Emira is furious and humiliated. Alix resolves to make it right.
But Emira herself is aimless, broke, and wary of Alix’s desire to help. At twenty-five, she is about to lose her health insurance and has no idea what to do with her life. When the video of Emira unearths someone from Alix’s past, both women find themselves on a crash course that will upend everything they think they know about themselves, and each other.
With empathy and piercing social commentary, Such a Fun Age explores the stickiness of transactional relationships, what it means to make someone “family,” the complicated reality of being a grown up, and the consequences of doing the right thing for the wrong reason.
