Such a Fun Age

A Best Book of the Year:
The Washington Post - Chicago Tribune - NPR - Vogue - Elle - Real Simple - InStyle - Good Housekeeping - Parade - Slate - Vox - Kirkus Reviews - Library Journal - BookPage
Longlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize
An Instant New York Times Bestseller
A Reese's Book Club Pick
The most provocative page-turner of the year. —Entertainment Weekly
I urge you to read Such a Fun Age. —NPR

A striking and surprising debut novel from an exhilarating new voice, Such a Fun Age is a page-turning and big-hearted story about race and privilege, set around a young black babysitter, her well-intentioned employer, and a surprising connection that threatens to undo them both.

Alix Chamberlain is a woman who gets what she wants and has made a living, with her confidence-driven brand, showing other women how to do the same. So she is shocked when her babysitter, Emira Tucker, is confronted while watching the Chamberlains' toddler one night, walking the aisles of their local high-end supermarket. The store's security guard, seeing a young black woman out late with a white child, 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 things 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 stickiness of transactional relationships, what it means to make someone family, and the complicated reality of being a grown up. It is a searing debut for our times.

"Charming, challenging, and so interesting you can hardly put it down." Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)

"We're all familiar with the phrases white privilege and race relations, but rarely has a book vivified these terms in such a lucid, absorbing, graceful, forceful, but unforced way." Library Journal (Starred Review)

"Briskly told and devilishly well-plotted....Smart, witty and even a bit sly, this penetrating social commentary is also one of this year's most readable novels." BookPage (Starred Review)

"This is an impressive, memorable first outing." Publishers Weekly

“In her smart and timely debut, Reid has her finder solidly on the pulse of the pressures and ironies inherent in social media, privilege, modern parenting, racial tension, and political correctness.” Booklist

"Reid is a sharp and delightful storyteller, with a keen eye, buoyant prose, and twists that made me gasp out loud. Such a Fun Age is a gripping page-turner with serious things to say about racism, class, gender, parenting, and privilege in modern America." Madeline Miller, author of Circe

"Such a Fun Age is a startling, razor-sharp debut. Kiley Reid has written a book with no easy answers, instead, filling her story with delicious gray areas and flawed points of view. It's both wildly fun and breathtakingly wise, deftly and confidently confronting issues of race, class, and privilege. I have to admit, I'm in awe." Taylor Jenkins Reid, author of Daisy Jones & the Six

"An amazing debut...A sort of modern Austen-esque take on racism and modern liberal sensibilities...except that description makes it sound far more serious and less clever than it is. [Kiley Reid] has a forensic eye." Jojo Moyes, author of Me Befo

A Best Book of the Year:
The Washington Post - Chicago Tribune - NPR - Vogue - Elle - Real Simple - InStyle - Good Housekeeping - Parade - Slate - Vox - Kirkus Reviews - Library Journal - BookPage

Longlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize

An Instant New York Times Bestseller

A Reese's Book Club Pick

"The most provocative page-turner of the year." --Entertainment Weekly

"I urge you to read Such a Fun Age." --NPR

A striking and surprising debut novel from an exhilarating new voice, Such a Fun Age is a page-turning and big-hearted story about race and privilege, set around a young black babysitter, her well-intentioned employer, and a surprising connection that threatens to undo them both.

Alix Chamberlain is a woman who gets what she wants and has made a living, with her confidence-driven brand, showing other women how to do the same. So she is shocked when her babysitter, Emira Tucker, is confronted while watching the Chamberlains' toddler one night, walking the aisles of their local high-end supermarket. The store's security guard, seeing a young black woman out late with a white child, 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 things 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 stickiness of transactional relationships, what it means to make someone "family," and the complicated reality of being a grown up. It is a searing debut for our times.

Kiley Reid earned her MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she was awarded the Truman Capote Fellowship and taught undergraduate creative writing workshops with a focus on race and class. Her short stories have been featured in Ploughshares, December, New South, and Lumina. Reid lives in Philadelphia.

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