Hello!
This week I have read Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid from the Booker Prize Longlist 2020. Set in Philadelphia and New York, this is the story of Emira Tucker, a Temple University graduate who is trying to find her path in life. It is also the story of Alix Chamberlain who is married with two children and has a career as an influencer. The relationship between Emira and Alix explores racial profiling, parenting, racism, inequality, class and privilege through stereotypical characters and humour.
Written in the third person, the narrative alternates between Emira and Alix. Opening with a racially profiled encounter, Emira (African American) is employed as a babysitter by Alix. On her night off, while at a party, Emira receives a call from Alix asking her to take three-year old (Briar) out as they deal with an incident at home. While taking Briar to Market Depot, Emira is challenged by the guard with ‘Is this your child?’ and ‘Any chance you’ve been drinking tonight, ma’am?’ as well as another customer ‘And I heard the little girl say that she’s not with her mom.’ The exchange is recorded by Kelley Copeland who befriends Emira and emails her the recording promising to delete it. Emira is rescued from the situation by Mr Chamberlain. The plot unfolds from this event and spirals as Emira explores her options without Alix and Alix connives ways to hold on to Emira. This underlying tension successfully pervades the novel.
Emira typifies young graduates today searching for a ‘grown up’ job with health insurance; she is against the clock because ‘by the end of 2015, Emira would be forced off her parents’ health coverage. She was almost twenty-six years old’. For Emira, her babysitting job is more than a job. She bonds with Briar in a way Alix does not. Like many graduates of the ‘slash generation’, Emira is highly identifiable, working additionally as a transcriber for the Green Party Philadelphia typing ‘125 words per minute’ as well as an ‘on-call transcriber’ for Temple University.
Alix, a New Yorker at heart, agrees to the move to Philadelphia, has two children and longs for her city friends: Jodi ‘a casting director’, Rachel ‘proudly Jewish and Japanese, managed a firm that designed book covers’ and Tamara, a ‘principle of a private school in Manhattan’. Alix pines for her New York life and submerses herself in social media, book deals and products while caring for her younger child, Catherine, ‘with her revamped blog, detailing the success of other letter-writing promotion-receiving getting-what-they-want women, had six thousand hits a day’. Many will identify with juggling work, children and a loss of identity. Alix’s relationship with Briar, is challenging and at times comical, but a sadness pervades the relationship. Briar’s voice is one that ‘consumed everything in its path’, ‘it was loud and hoarse and never stopped’ and the relief of Briar sleeping is described as ‘it was as if a fire alarm had finally been turned off’.
Reid sets the stage for the relationship between Alix and Emira to be linked by more than just an employer-employee association and the narrative takes an unexpected twist with Emira dating the pushy Kelley Copeland, who just happened to also have ‘ruined Alex Murphy’s senior year […] before she became Alix Chamberlain’. Kelley is described as ‘one of those white guys who not only goes out of his way to date black women but only wants to date black women’. This successfully establishes further underlying tensions between Emira, Alix and Kelley.
While Emira sees babysitting for the Chamberlain’s as a job, Alix becomes increasingly, and strangely, obsessed with Emira, her welfare and future. Invading Emira’s privacy, Alix checks her phone: ‘Alix felt betrayed by Emira’s cell phone. These were the first plans Emira had in the last month that Alix hadn’t known about before she pretended she didn’t’. Alix makes decisions on what she thinks will be best for Emira stating: ‘you might be too young to understand this right now, but we have always had your best interests at heart’ and emphasising her love for Emira ‘we love you’ as part of the family regardless of the fact that ‘they made her wear a uniform’. This ‘white saviour’ behaviour underscores Alix’s privilege and highlights the further distinctions between them.
The themes of Such a Fun Age speak to very relevant topics that do need discussing. Emira is a highly likeable and believable character. Alix, veers far in to the stereotypical at times and oversteps credibility with her actions, dialogue and obsession. Equally, Kelley’s questionable behaviour gives the impression of harbouring sinister strands. Such a Fun Age does intertwine deeply important explorations of race and privilege while questioning if there is a ‘fun age’ through humorous dialogues, encounters and relationships.
Themes: racial profiling, class, inequality, parenting, motherhood, privilege, white saviour, family relationships, friendships, love
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