Such A Fun Age by Kiley Reid

 

Emira is drifting.  She has graduated college but what's next?  She has patched together a couple of parttime jobs to make the rent in the small apartment she shares with a roommate.  She works a couple of days as a transcriptionist for a nonprofit and the rest of the time she babysits for two children.  Briar is almost three and she has a baby sister.  Their parents are upwardly mobile professionals.  Alix is an influencer with her own company while her husband, Peter, is a local newscaster.  They are both white while Emira is black.  Emira knows she needs to find a job with benefits and potential but doesn't really know what she wants to do and she and Briar have a special relationship.

She meets Kelly one night in a grocery store.  Emira had been called away from a party by Alix.  They had had an emergency and wanted Emira to take Briar to a grocery store while the police came to their house so she wouldn't be scared.  But a store security guard, seeing a black woman with a white toddler at eleven-thirty, accuses Emira of kidnapping the child and won't let her leave.  Kelly sees what is going on and videos it on his phone.  The store incident is over when Peter arrives to vouch for Emira but she is left shaken and angry.

Soon after she runs into Kelly again and they begin a relationship.  As it advances, she can tell Kelly wants her to figure out a better job while Alix wants to be Emira's friend.  She starts to feel pressured by both of them and when it turns out that the two have a former relationship, everything comes to a crisis point.

Kiley Reid is an African American author.  This novel, which explores the aimlessness of youth, racial relationships and the pushiness of those who think they know better what one's life should be is her debut.  She attended the Iowa Writer's Workshop where she received the Truman Capote Fellowship and is now an associate professor as well as an author.  I could relate best to Emira as I have a daughter the same age.  She went through a year or so of this after she graduated from college.  Her graduation occurred during the lockdown for covid and she ended up moving home for a while as employers weren't hiring.  She felt pressured to start the rest of her life while not knowing what that rest would look like.  Just as she figured it out and is now happy and employed in a job she loves, I feel Emira will do the same.  This book was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2020 and is recommended for readers of literary fiction and those interested in other lives.