Such a Fun Age
By Kiley Reid
Blurb
What happens when you do the right thing for the wrong reason?
Alix Chamberlain is a woman who gets what she wants and has made a living showing other women how to do the same. A mother to two small girls, she started out as a blogger and has quickly built herself into a confidence-driven brand. So she is shocked when her babysitter, Emira Tucker, is confronted while watching the Chamberlains’ toddler one night. Seeing a young black woman out late with a white child, a security guard at their local high-end supermarket accuses Emira of kidnapping two-year old Briar. A small crowd gathers, a bystander films everything, and Emira is furious and humiliated. Alix resolves to make it 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.
With empathy and piercing social commentary, Such a Fun Age explores the awkwardness of transactional relationships, what it means to make someone ‘family’, the complicated reality of being a grown-up and the consequences of doing the right thing for the wrong reason.
Our Review
Summary
Such a Fun Age was an interesting and thought provoking read.
Such a Fun Age is essentially about a privileged white woman taking it upon herself to interfere in her young black employee’s life by offering unwanted help.
Emira is out celebrating a friend’s birthday when her employer, Alix, calls her asking her to take her young daughter Briar to the grocery store to get her out of the house.
Whilst in the grocery store a security guard and concerned woman challenge why Emira is in the grocery store at that time of night with a small white child. The situation escalates and a young man films the whole thing.
When a figure from Alix’s past turns up in Emira’s life it sets of a chain of events that will unsettle the lives of both Emira and Alix.
A few quotes
“It was almost astonishing that Emira’s daily babysitting job (a place of pricey onesies, colourful stacking toys, baby wipes and sectioned dinner plates) could interrupt her current night-time[sC1] state (loud music, bodycon dresses, lip liner and red solo cups…Under the veil of two strong mixed drinks, the intersection of these spaces almost seemed funny, but what wasn’t funny was Emira’s current bank balance: a total of seventy-nine dollars and sixteen cents.”
“Hi, sweetie” The woman bent down and pressed her hands into her knees.
“Do you know where your mommy is?”
“Her mom is at home.” Emira tapped her collarbone twice as she said, “You can just talk to me.”
“So you’re saying,” the guard clarified, “that a random woman three blocks away, asked you to watch her child this late at night?”
“Oh my god, no. That’s not what I said. I’m her nanny.”
My opinion
I think in general it makes you think about checking your help is wanted before you offer it and you aren’t overstepping the mark. In the case of Emira and Alix here ‘help’ was clearly motivated by other factors though and wasn’t completely from an unselfish place.
I thought the characters were well written and I particularly liked Emira and Briar.
My only criticism is that the ending felt a bit rushed and I ended the book feeling dissatisfied. There were a few things I felt weren’t resolved and things I wanted to know but maybe they just weren’t resolved in the way I wanted. The conclusion of the book is why I haven’t given it a higher rating.
Our Final Rating...
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