Such a Fun Age

A quick read and a solid debut that deftly weaves in humour while tackling serious and relevant social issues. Two POVs were done well for the most part, but the main protagonist could be more developed and the secondary POV becomes really unsympathetic rather quickly. (As does the main protag, in fact, but for other reasons.)
It was clearly written with a screen adaptation in mind. Some bad dialogue and missed opportunities, and an unsatisfying ending, but still a fun read.

The first time I saw this book, I skipped over it because of its boring cover/title. Then I heard a quick synopsis, which sounded interesting, so i added it to my tbr. It still took more than a year to actually start reading it because it never grabbed my eye while looking for something to read. That was a mistake because I actually really liked this and was the kind of book where when I wasn't reading it, I was thinking about how much longer until I could get back to reading it.

Dieses Buch hat mich ein wenig irritiert - Rassismus in all seinen Ausprägungen scheint dieses Jahr extrem viel Platz auf meinen Leselisten einzunehmen. Insofern fand ich es interessant, hier zwei weiße Protagonisten zu sehen, die völlig überzeugt sind, nicht rassistisch zu sein, allerdings auf eine verquere Art genau das sind - und dabei den Splitter im Auge des Gegenübers sehen, nicht aber den Balken im eigenen Auge.

Allerdings wirken alle Figuren auf mich künstlich, einschließlich der Protagonistin und ihren Freunden, das kleine Mädchen, dass sie betreut, wirkt auf mich absolut unglaubwürdig für eine Dreijährige (und ich habe wirklich merkwürdige Dreijährige kennengelernt).

Insofern - spannender Ansatz, aber in der Ausführung für mich leider nicht wirklich gelungen.

I’m giving this 3 stars because it’s competent. I don’t have anything to complain about but for a book that supposedly explores questions around race, it’s pretty bland. Very low stakes. The book seems almost allergic to exploring actual conflict, as everyone involved spends most of the book convincing themselves everything is fine. I suppose that makes it more comfortable than other books that deal with these issues, I just can’t imagine why anyone would want to be comfortable when considering them. The person I would recommend this book to doesn’t exist.

This stands atop the literary fiction I've read in 2020 as a refreshingly direct and compelling read with a lot of important themes for the 21st century literary fiction readers' customer base to digest. It feels to me like Kiley Reid wrote the Thanksgiving Dinner sequence as a short story initially - it's the only event in the book that gets multiple chapters devoted to it and the immediate fallout. As a result, there's definitely some racing-to-the-finish writing in the final part of the book, with a climax that feels theatrical at the expense of a really dialogue-rich confrontation. But overall, the writing for the protagonist, Emira, was excellent and the satirical jabs of Alix Chamberlain's privileged social circles was very satisfying.

I've found it difficult to describe this book. It reads with the ease of chick lit. It addresses big issues (racism, privilege, white savior complex, bias) without feeling heavy. The dialogue between Emira's friends feels effortless and real. My dings against this book: Alix is utterly unlikable. Even villains usually have something redeeming, but with Alix? Nope. And the ending was both a bit much and not enough. It felt like a departure from the rest of the book and didn't deliver the satisfaction I was hoping for.

I appreciate why so many people I know disliked this book. If it had come across more in the vein of light-hearted satire, rather than the SNL Weekend Update character of the woman you wish you hadn’t started a conversation with at a party yelling at the reader to “THINK ABOUT IT,” I do not think it would seem so condescending. But, alas. I’ll say that it does make two points well: (1) Everyone’s backstories, about which we may know nothing, color their current viewpoints and behavior in ways we (and they) may not understand, and (2) the American “gig economy” has come to expect an unreasonable level of emotional investment from workers, despite denying them basic job security, a living wage, or health insurance.