He’s looking to validate himself through someone else. She hasn’t caught on because she doesn’t know who she is.
― Kiley Reid, Such a Fun Age
CBR17 Bingo: TBR
For the past week, I’ve tried to think of an appropriate metaphor for what this reading experience was like for me. In terms of amusement park metaphors, it was like a rollercoaster with the slow climb to the top, each click of the chain ramping up the tension until you’re yanked up and over, all of the air leaving your lungs so quickly you barely have time to inhale before the next drop.
This book felt more like the log ride. You get into a seemingly sturdy “log” with your friends or family, and you toodle along slowly, each curve revealing something mundane and anodyne, like trees or a miniature waterfall. Off in the distance, you see people walking around, going about their business as if nothing is amiss. But as soon as you feel like you’ve gotten the hang of it, the water surges, the log takes a hard turn, you’re plunged into a dark tunnel, the only sounds you can hear are the screams of the family in front of you.
You pop out into the sunshine and your log is barreling down the chute to splash into a pool of water of dubious origin. If you’re lucky, you’re not in the front and don’t get a face full of nasty water. However, no matter where you’re positioned, you’re bound to get some dirty water on you regardless.
The point of my excessively long lead-in is that I thought I knew what this book was about until I didn’t. I coasted along, enjoying the scenery, expecting something odd or scandalous to happen. However, once I reached the halfway mark, things got real wild real quick. Everyone in this book gets dirty, no matter how they position themselves to avoid any blame or cover up their mistakes.
Emira Tucker doesn’t know what she wants to do with her life. While she barely makes ends meet with her part-time transcription job and babysitting three days a week, she sees her friends moving on with their lives; getting promotions at work, getting graduate degrees, etc.. Emira comes from a family of doers, and she can’t tell her parents that she quit stenography school. While Emira keeps telling herself that she should be doing more with her life, she doesn’t know what she wants. She adores the little girl she babysits, Briar, and even though it may not be as well-respected as her friends’ 9-to-5s, she is proud of what she does.
When Alix, Briar’s mother, calls Emira begging her to leave a party and come pick up Briar while Alix deals with an emergency, Emira and her friend Zara, both young black women, take Briar to the twenty-four-hour supermarket nearby to kill time while Alix sorts out the mess at home. After dancing in the aisles of the deserted store and trying to keep a sleepy Briar calm, Emira is accused by a fellow shopper of kidnapping Briar. The security guard begins interrogating Emira, and Emira calls Briar’s father to come to the store. When he arrives, the security guard backs down. Emira is shaken and humiliated by the entire experience. Even though she just wants to go home, another customer comes forward, a white man, saying he filmed the whole thing on his phone and that Emira should sue the store.
This kicks off the engrossing story of Emira, her boss Alix, a wealthy, white momfluencer who struggles to connect with her oldest child, and Kelley, the man who filmed the incident at the store.
This book sucked me in. I thought I was reading a book about rich, white people being especially shitty, but it was so much more than that. Alix and Emira are such full, well-drawn characters. Even the detail with which the author describes the group dynamics between Alix and her group of elitist, sheltered, NYC friends and Emira’s group of single, young women of color, is masterful. When my hand wasn’t turning the page, it was covering my mouth as I watched these characters manipulate one another and their increasingly tangled situation.