The untelling5/19/2023 There’s a heartbreaking scene in which Celestial’s uncle-Roy’s attorney-encourages her to forget everything she knows about presenting herself while she speaks in her husband’s defense. Roy is arrested, tried, convicted, and imprisoned in Louisiana, the state with the highest per-capita rate of incarceration in the United States, and where the ratio of black to white prisoners is 4 to 1. This novel is peopled by vividly realized, individual characters and driven by interpersonal drama, but it is also very much about being black in contemporary America. Once Roy is released, the narrative resumes a rotating first person, but there’s a new voice, that of Andre, once Celestial’s best friend and now something more. Roy is incarcerated in Louisiana, Celestial is in Atlanta, and Jones’ formal choice underscores their separation. The epistolary style makes perfect sense. When Roy goes to prison, it becomes a novel in letters. Jones begins with chapters written from the points of view of her main characters. Then, on a visit back home, Roy is arrested for a crime he did not commit. After a year of marriage, they’re thinking about buying a bigger house and starting a family. By the time he marries Spelman alum Celestial, she’s an up-and-coming artist. Growing up in a working-class family in Louisiana, he took advantage of all the help he could get and earned a scholarship to Morehouse College. A look at the personal toll of the criminal justice system from the author of Silver Sparrow (2011) and The Untelling (2005).
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