Brookfield Reads Book Group Discussion

Winner of the African American Literary Award 

Finalist for: 
The New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award
The Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award
The VCU Cabell First Novelist Award
The NAACP Image Award
The Athenaeum of Philadelphia’s Literary Award 

A Book Club Pick:
Vox • Marie Claire #ReadWithMC • Buzzfeed • Book Girl Magic • Well-Read Black Girl • WNYC Get Lit With All of It • Nerdette

“Reid constructs a plot so beautifully intricate and real and fascinating that readers will forget it’s also full of tough questions about race, class and identity….With this entertaining novel, Reid subverts our notions of what it means to write about race and class in America, not to mention what it means to write about love. In short, it’s a great way to kick off 2020.” ­—Washington Post

“A complex, layered page-turner…This is a book that will read, I suspect, quite differently to various audiences—funny to some, deeply uncomfortable and shamefully recognizable to others—but whatever the experience,….Let its empathetic approach to even the ickiest characters stir you, allow yourself to share Emira’s millennial anxieties about adulting, take joy in the innocence of Briar’s still-unmarred personhood, and rejoice that Kiley Reid is only just getting started.” —NPR

“[Such a Fun Age] nestl[es] a nuanced take on racial biases and class divides into a page-turning saga of betrayals, twists, and perfectly awkward relationships….The novel feels bound for book-club glory, due to its sheer readability. The dialogue crackles with naturalistic flair. The plotting is breezy and surprising. Plus, while Reid’s feel for both the funny and the political is undeniable, she imbues her flawed heroes with real heart.” —Entertainment Weekly
 
“Reid’s acerbic send-up of identity politics thrives in the tension between the horror and semiabsurdity of race relations in the social media era. But she is too gifted a storyteller to reduce her tale to, well, black-and-white….Clever and hilariously cringe-y, this debut is a provocative reminder of what the road to hell is paved with.” —O, The Oprah Magazine

“Lively…[A] carefully observed study of class and race, whose portrait of white urban affluence—Everlane sweaters, pseudo-feminist babble—is especially pointed. Attempting to navigate the white conscience in the age of Black Lives Matter, Reid unsparingly maps the moments when good intentions founder.” —The New Yorker