An American Marriage is 2018 Oprah Book Club Pick
An American Marriage by Tayari Jones is the 2018 novel picked by Oprah Winfrey for Oprah’s Book Club. Oprah said after the first few chapters she forgot the characters were fictional and found herself in the zone readers yearned for.
An American Marriage is about the wrongful incarceration and conviction of a newly wed named Roy and details how it profoundly affects his relationship with his wife Celeste. While Roy is incarcerated Celeste finds solace in Andre, her friend who was also the best man at their wedding.
This is Jones’ fourth novel and she revealed in an interview with Oprah that she chose this storyline because her earlier novels were tackling issues she dealt with personally but she decided to take on an issue that mattered to the masses.
Oprah asked Jones how she decided on the topic of criminal justice she said, “To black Americans, mass incarceration is an ongoing threat, like hurricanes on the coast and earthquakes or fires in California. Prison can swoop in and snatch up the men in our families at any time. I decided to write about the collateral damage around that — what happens to families, to relationships, to dreams for the future…”
During the week of February 11, 2018 the novel was the second most sold on the Amazon Charts and number two on New York Times Bestsellers list in Fiction.
