First published by The Times on 1 January 2020
What a joy to find a debut novel so good that it leaves you looking forward to the rest of its author’s career. With an unfussy, witty voice comparable to American contemporaries Curtis Sittenfeld and Taffy Brodesser-Akner, in Such a Fun Age Kiley Reid has painted a portrait of the liberal middle class that resonates far beyond its Philadelphia setting.
The novel begins with a dramatic set piece: Emira, a 25-year-old babysitter, receives a call late at night from her bosses, who ask her to collect their toddler from the house while they deal with a crisis. Emira takes the little girl to a supermarket to kill time, gently entertaining her in the aisles — but the presence of this black woman with a white child at midnight attracts attention, and a confrontation between a security guard and a terrified Emira quickly escalates.
So far, so morally unambiguous: the baby’s parents save the day and are appalled that their babysitter has been treated this way. The mother declares that she will never go to this supermarket again, to which Emira privately reacts with the shrug of someone who knows this wasn’t an unusual event. From here the novel unfolds into a much murkier tale of race, money and reputation.
The incident leaves Emira’s boss, Alix, desperate to befriend her and make amends. Alix has a nebulous, but successful career as a letter-writing coach and self-help guru; she is polished, but palpably insecure. She wants Emira to know she has black friends. She hides her Marie Kondo book on decluttering, worried that Emira will be appalled that someone can be so privileged that they need help to throw things away. At one point we are told: “If Emira stayed much longer, Alix would risk accidentally saying I love you, or ask if Emira liked babysitting for them, or how old Emira thought she was.”
Yet Alix knows very little about Emira, because she hasn’t asked and because the babysitter doesn’t reciprocate her interest in bonding. It is a fantasy entirely focused on how the approval of this young woman would make Alix feel about herself. Her crush begins to spiral into a cringeworthy madness.
Emira’s other great white admirer is her new boyfriend, Kelley, a man who consistently dates women of colour and who delivers unsolicited advice about how she should deal with racism. He is kind and funny, and so Emira fights her uneasiness about this. These are characters with whom many liberal white people will reluctantly identify — characters who believe themselves to be good, and whose own motivations may be opaque to them. At the warm heart of the book is Emira’s devotion to Alix’s toddler; how can she leave the mother without rejecting the little girl too?
It adds up to a tantalisingly plotted tale about the way we live now: about white guilt and virtue-signalling, but also about the uneven dynamic between domestic staff and their employers.
Film and TV rights have been bought by the producer and actress Lena Waithe, and Reid is working on the screenplay. Unlike Brodesser-Akner, whose debut last year was lent heft by her reputation as a New York Times writer, Reid, 32, is only just emerging into the public eye. Such a Fun Age, however, speaks for itself; I suspect it will turn its writer into a star.
Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid, Bloomsbury Circus, 320pp, £12.99