Vivid and vital

American author Tayari Jones’ new novel Kin is a love story — but it is far from a typical one.

Moving, tender and beautifully told, it is the shared coming-of-age story of Niecy and Annie, two friends whose adoration for and devotion to one another survive multiple tests of time, distance, misunderstanding and heartbreak.

Jones is an English and creative writing professor at Emory University in Atlanta and the author of An American Marriage, which was awarded the 2018 Women’s Prize for Fiction. Kin is her fifth novel.

Annie and Niecy, the alternating narrators of this novel, are cradle friends growing up together in the small town of Honeysuckle, La. in the 1950s. Niecy is being raised by an aunt, who begrudgingly stepped in to look after her after Niecy’s mother was murdered by Niecy’s father. Annie also is being raised by kin, as her young mother handed her over to her grandmother within weeks of giving birth and subsequently disappeared.

Niecy and Annie spend all their time together — walking to and from school, planning their futures and grieving their mothers — even though they are opposite in many ways. Niecy is subdued, studious and unadventurous, while Annie is more restless, impulsive and searching. Their differences, however, never seem to strain their relationship, even when Annie suddenly leaves town unannounced with a couple of new friends in the middle of the night.

Not long after, Niecy also leaves Honeysuckle behind following a harrowing misadventure on a segregated bus, and begins her studies at Spellman College in Atlanta. There she discovers new truths about herself, her desires and the workings of the world, sharing some (though not all) of them in letters she writes to Annie. In the meantime, Annie, having settled in Memphis in the hope of locating her wayward mother, is more upfront about divulging to Niecy the challenges she’s facing, especially regarding the erratic relationship she has with her boyfriend Bobo.

“Niecy,” she writes, “all I want is to find my mother. Bobo talks about how I am not normal, But I think wanting to find my mother is the most normal thing in the world.”

In Niecy and Annie, Jones has given voice to characters who are clever, keenly perceptive and have their own unique ways with words. When the friends reunite after two years apart, Annie reports that they were “hugging each other like two people freezing to death, each one using the other one like a heating pad.” She also describes a relationship “held together by a cord as fragile as spider-silk” and an afternoon as “peaceful as a field of buttercups.”

Not to be outdone, Niecy describes a big city movie theatre that “sprawled the whole block like a rich man’s girlfriend stretched out on a chaise.”

Niecy gets to experience the inside of that movie theatre, albeit just from the upstairs coloured section, when she goes out on a date with Franklin, a lawyer from an established Black Atlanta family. Franklin and Bobo — as well as all of the townsfolk, suitors, employers, new friends and surrogate mother figures Niecy and Annie encounter on their separate journeys — are, like the two young women themselves, nuanced, sharply drawn and essential to the unfolding of the narrative. Each one of them is impacted by, or impacts, Niecy and Annie in a fundamental way. No one in this novel is introduced and then summarily dismissed.

Jones’ characterizations, prose and plotting throughout are impeccable, and the result is a stunning work of fiction — a vivid and vital novel about overt racism, subtle classism, activism, ambition, motherhood, love, loss and, of course, friendship.

In spite of the sadness at its core, Kin is a joy to read.

Sharon Chisvin is a Winnipeg writer.