The Epistolary Heart of <br><i>An American Marriage</i>

Reading someone else’s private letters feels almost as intrusive as spying on them through their living-room window. The personalized salutation, the handwriting quirks, and the inside jokes sprinkled throughout offer a glimpse at an interior world only the recipient is meant to see. There is no performance, no act put on for third-party observers. And while perusing just one letter between two people provides hints into their relationship, digging into a whole trove of letters sent over the course of several years can reveal intricacies that face-to-face interaction with the authors never would.

It is this sort of intimacy that Tayari Jones so searchingly exploresin her new novel, , which follows the wrongful imprisonment of a young black man namedJones shifts from the first-person narration provided by these two protagonists to letters they send each other while Roy is in prison. She then returns to their firsthand accounts, adding in a third narratorAndre, a childhood friend of Celestial’s and a college friend of Roy’s. The variation in these perspectives serves an important purpose: It offers up myriad means of understanding the novel’s complicated central relationship,and lets every character speak for themselves, giving each an opportunity to capturethe reader’s allegiance.