This review contains affiliate links, which earn me a small commission when you click and purchase, at no extra cost to you. Thank you for supporting my small business and allowing me to continue providing you a reliable resource for clean book ratings.
Twenty-five-year-old Emira Tucker has a bachelor’s degree from Temple University but still no strong feeling about what she’d like to do as a career, unlike her siblings or her close friends. Until she can figure that out, she’s staying afloat by doing some transcription work and babysitting three days a week for the Chamberlain family. When she gets a call late on a Saturday night while out with her friends from Mrs. Chamberlain asking her to take her preschooler out of the house for an hour or so because of an emergency, she does so because she’s promised double pay.
At Alix Chamberlain’s request, Emira takes little Briar to the pricey grocery store near their house to peruse for a while. It’s fine until the security guard suspects this Black babysitter of kidnapping the white child. Another shopper finds the accusation ridiculous and records the humiliating exchange, until Mr. Chamberlain comes and vouches for his sitter. Emira tells the white man who recorded video that she really doesn’t want to do anything about the situation, nor does she even want the video, but he insists on emailing it to her just in case.
Alix Chamberlain is a 30-something white mom who has earned some money and attention for letter writing. She created an Instagram account and blog explaining how to write letters and how to request free items — which has helped her score lots of free swag over a decade or so. She’s trying to revive her career after having a second daughter, but she’s not gaining much traction. But after her sitter’s embarrassing treatment at the Market Depot, she becomes almost obsessed with making it up to Emira and becoming friends, proving to the younger woman how empathetic and not-racist she is.
When Emira runs into Kelley, the 30-something white man who took video the night of the situation, and begins dating him, it introduces a whole other level of racial discussion into the story. Kelley surrounds himself with Black friends, and as time goes on, Alix, in trying to be a good influence and support for the babysitter she keeps saying is “one of the family,” wonders to her younger employee about his motives.
The story goes back and forth between Emira’s and Alix’s viewpoints and goes some interesting, if oddly coincidental, places. It came to a pretty wild conclusion, too, which was particularly fascinating in the runup.
All of the book’s characters seem to be more caricatures or placeholders than true characters, and I’m about 80 percent convinced that generally seems to be the point. The depiction of their habits and opinions are sly and spot-on. Even the young Black woman who is the focal point around which the two white characters of Alix Chamberlain and Kelley Copeland revolve doesn’t get to be a truly fleshed-out character, either, even though half of the book is from her point of view. And this could very well be intentional as well: It seems that Alix and Kelley project their feelings and expectations onto her as they both try to prove to her (but truly, more to themselves) their “awareness” and not-racism. So Emira as a character in Kiley Reid’s book is sacrificed just as Emira Tucker the fictional person is flattened into two dimensions.
The story exists, clearly, to highlight various attitudes and acts of racism and then the “opposite” behaviors or attitudes (but truly not opposite, simply a different shade of ignorance and disconnectedness) that some whites who are either trying to be not-racist or who simply want to look like it can have toward people of color. And it does it pretty well. Again, in the stereotype vein, I think some of them are low-hanging fruit, too obvious or easy, but then others are illuminating, even teaching moments, giving white readers some things to ponder on and consider more in depth, which is always a good thing. Overall, glad I read the book, but it wasn’t the excellent read I was expecting from some reviews or hype.
Rated: High, primarily for profanity: 77 uses of strong language, 25 to 30 instances of mild and moderate language, and about a dozen instances of the name of Deity in vain. There are a few sex scenes, quite brief, but with some strong detail involved.
Click here to purchase your copy of Such a Fun Age on Amazon.
*I received an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.
