WARNING: Spoilers ahead!
“Deep into her thirties, Emira would wrestle with what to take from her time at the Chamberlain house. Some days she carried the sweet relief that Briar would learn to become a self-sufficient person. And some days, Emira would carry the dread that if Briar ever struggled to find herself, she’d probably just hire someone to do it for her,” Kiley Reid wrote in “Such a Fun Age.”
Published in 2019, “Such a Fun Age” is a heartfelt coming-of-age novel intertwined with a complicated and insightful commentary on racial dynamics in the United States. It tells the story of 25-year-old Emira Tucker, an African American woman who babysits for a caucasian family. Her life and her relationships are thrown into disarray when she is accused of kidnapping Briar Chamberlain, daughter of Alix and Peter Chamberlain, whom she babysits for. As the Chamberlains try to right this wrong and support Tucker, she and Alix Chamberlain are sent down a long, complicated path.
This book artfully blends its elements, balancing Tucker’s coming of age journey with her struggles in dealing with the Chamberlains in her life. Alix Chamberlain, the second main character in the story, means well in her attempts to help Tucker. However, her methods can be questionable and deceptive, highlighting her flaws surrounding her perception of Black people and racial dynamics in general.
Alix becomes almost obsessed with Tucker, whom, in reality, she barely knows and cannot relate to. The Chamberlains are white and wealthy, things which automatically put them at an advantage in life over their babysitter. This is a fact, however, that Alix Chamberlain seems unable to accept.
“Alix fantasized about Emira discovering things about her that shaped what Alix saw as the truest version of herself. Like the fact that one of Alix’s closest friends was also black. That Alix’s new and favorite shoes were from Payless, and only cost eighteen dollars,” Reid writes.
Alix Chamberlain begins digging into Tucker’s life to learn more about her, and as it tends to happen, she ends up going too far and causing more harm than good. Reid does an effective job of making you understand Alix Chamberlain’s thoughts and feelings, while still understanding that her views of race and her babysitter are wildly skewed. She ends up hacking into Tucker’s email account, finding a video of the grocery store confrontation, where the babysitter argues with a security guard as she is accused of kidnapping her charge, the Chamberlain’s daughter, and posting it without her consent. It’s a wildly unacceptable, unjustifiable act, but it’s impossible not to sympathize with it at least somewhat.
The other complex storyline in this novel is Tucker’s relationship with her boyfriend, Kelly Copeland, a white man. She questions his motives, noticing how he tends to date and befriend almost exclusively Black people. It’s interesting to experience Tucker’s perspective and worries about how their life would play out as an interracial couple, and she addresses issues that many people have never considered.
“Emira and Kelley talked about race very little because it always seemed like they were doing it already. When she really considered a life with him, a real life, a joint-bank-account-emergency-contact-both-names-on-the-lease life, Emira almost wanted to roll her eyes and ask, “Are we really gonna do this?” Reid writes.
In the end, Tucker and Alix Chamberlain part ways when Tucker finds out about her employer’s betrayal. Tucker also ends her relationship with Copeland, entering a completely new phase of her life. While both of these relationships had issues due to her race, and the incident at the grocery store is a driving force of this novel, it is also a beautiful coming of age story regardless of Tucker’s race. Reid blends these aspects seamlessly, creating a complex and thought-provoking journey for her main character.
“Such a Fun Age” will tug at your heartstrings as you watch Tucker navigate her twenties while also provoking important and often unacknowledged conversations about modern race dynamics. It’s an interesting and page-turning read any time of the year, but especially during Black History Month, when learning about the history of Black people in America and our intentional and unintentional biases is as important as ever.
