Kiley Reid - Such a Fun Age
Rookie Season: Debuts | Week 34º
Rookie Season: Debuts
Extra seasoning for your everyday food for thought
Genre: Coming-of-Age, Domestic Fiction
“I think that showing character strengths and weaknesses just remains so much more true to who we can be as human.”
— Kiley Reid
Back Cover (G. P. Putnam’s Sons):
“Alix Chamerlain is a woman who gets what she wants and has made a living showing other women how to do the same. So she is shocked when her babysitter, Emira Tucker, is confronted while watching the Chamerlains’ toddler one night in the aisles of their high-end supermarket. The store’s security guard, seeing a young black woman out late with a white child, accuses Emira of kidnapping. A small crowd gathers, a bystander films everything, and Emira is furious and humiliated. Alix resolves to make things 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.”
Such a Fun Age, the 2019 debut by American author Kiley Reid published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons, tells the story of a young Black woman wrongly accused of kidnapping a white child, while at her babysitting job, and the uncomfortable series of events that follow. An amusing detail of the accusation (made in an upscale grocery store, late-at-night, by a concerned older white female shopper who promptly alerts security—with good intentions, of course) is its self-righteous incrimination of babysitter Emira and toddler Briar’s impromptu dance party within the store aisle. Emira and Briar are committing the most heinous of crimes—soaking in too much of that pure, unadulterated joy while floating downstream towards the sea of life’s continuous drift.
Famous modernist author Franz Kafka once wrote, “Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.” In a pinch, Such a Fun Age expertly cross-examines our American innocence with our strong desire to outperform others, often at the expense of group welfare, stressing that age-old adage that even “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”1
“‘Well, yeah, but that’s the point. You think it’s comfortable because it’s always been that way for you.’
Emira and Kelley talked about race very little because it always seemed like they were doing it already.”
— Kiley Reid, Such a Fun Age
Did You Know?
Did you know that author Kiley Reid, a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop where she was the recipient of the Truman Capote Fellowship, summed up her debut novel Such a Fun Age as, “a comedy of good intentions?”2
Tell Me More…
Reid stated, ‘I definitely started from wanting to explore the awkwardness of transactional relationships — but also bigger themes of ownership, from the small petty ones like ‘Oh, well, she’s our sitter’ or ‘I knew him, so he’s mine,’ to the awkward history of black women raising white children in this country.3 That just comes flooding back, no matter whether you like it or not, in certain interactions.”
Some Food For Thought:
Consider your own experiences: Can you recall an event where you witnessed someone create a metaphorical hell for themselves (and others), while truly believing that what they were doing was right and good? Where did they err?
Rookie Season: Debuts
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