Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid

Such a Fun Age is a engaging, if ultimately frustrating, read. The premise brought to mind two favorites of mine (Lucy and Luster, both focus on young black women living with white middle-class couples and taking ‘care’ of their child). Given the buzz around Such a Fun Age I had rather high expectations and when I first picked it up I found that opening chapter, in which Emira is stopped by the security guard, to be deeply compelling. The ones that followed however were less so. The story switches its focus on Alix, her husband remains an outlier in the narrative so that he is little other than a name on a page, and her career/mummy drama. Aaaand I just did not care for it. It felt a lot like reading Liane Moriarty but with far less humor. If anything, Alix and her circle of friends just reinforced my preconceptions about Americans (which is not something I necessarily was looking for). She’s white, wealthy, influential (she runs a blog that I never entirely understood), and spends most of the narrative trying to prove to herself and others that she is not racist (often resorting to the classic, ‘well, one of my friends is Black so clearly I cannot possibly be racist’). While I am not saying that I do not believe that people like Alix exist (I have come across a fair share of clips and news starring people like her) I just did not want to have pages and pages dedicated to her.
I have similar feelings towards Kelley who I did not like from the get-go and his first date with Emira just confirmed my suspicions about him.

Much of the narrative is not about the so-called ‘inciting incident’ in which Emira, a young Black babysitter is stopped by a security guard while she is with her three-year-old white charge, Briar. While this episode does obviously have an impact on Emira, the story is more about her deciding whether she wants to continue to work for Alix and Peter. At twenty-five, she feels left behind by her friends, all of who seem to be actively doing the job they want or working towards a certain goal. Emira’s directionless life was understandable if a bit wearisome. I wished that more of her personality could have shone through a little more, as she at times seemed a passive passenger who merely responds to Alix and Kelley’s behavior. Because of Emira’s not-so-strong characterization, Alix’s obsession with her did not ring entirely true. Still, I really loved those scenes in which Emira is hanging out with her three close friends or when she is looking after Briar (finally, a fictional child I liked!). The interactions between Emira and her friends rang particularly true to life, and I found their energy, banter, and group dynamics to be really captivating. Sadly, the story does not center around Emira (I so wanted more of her relationship with her family) but it actually gave Alix way too much backstory which did not make me sympathize with her one bit. While she was not by no means evil incarnate I found her boring and vapid. It was also frustrating that a lot of her behavior is never actually called out, she repeatedly crosses the line with Emira and gets away with it. During that final act, Emira does stand up for herself but it still seemed to me that Alix gets away with a lot of shit. Which, is realistic enough, yet another white wealthy woman getting away with all sorts of things but why dedicate so much of the narrative to her and not Emira?

I also found it a bit annoying that the story proves Emira wrong as with the exception of her the other characters do not change (looking at Kelley in particular).
I don’t know…I guess I am just not interested in characters like Alix and felt that the story could have been executed differently and in a way that could have actually elevated Emira’s voice. Still, Reid’s dialogues came across as authentic, and I appreciated her commentary on race, class, and gender. Her prose at times felt a bit superficial, as it tended to move from character to character within the same scene without really delving beneath their surface, but it also had a nice flow to it.

In spite of my reservations, I do think that Reid is a good writer and I look forward to what she will write next.

my rating: ★★★☆☆

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