For lovers of historical fiction, I want to recommend Tayari Jones’ fifth and newest novel, Kin (2026), which I finished last week. Kin follows the childhood and young adulthood of two “cradle friends,” as they call each other— Vernice (Niecy) and Annie. After growing up together in 1950s Honeysuckle, Louisiana, a dangerously still place, Niecy goes to Spelman College in Atlanta (Jones’ alma mater) and Annie takes the long way round to Memphis to try to find her mother, who abandoned her as a baby. As children in Honeysuckle, Niecy was raised by an independent aunt after her father murders her mother and Annie was raised by her grandmother; their mothers and fathers are dead, absent, or unknown, and yet the two of them form their own family unit, formed on shared circumstances and the kind of implicit understanding of two people raised in the same place.
Jones captures beautifully the ambivalence of leaving a small town which contains all Niecy and Annie’s loved ones, a sweet and comforting familiarity, but also a claustrophobia, the dreadful knowledge that time’s march will leave the town unaffected. There is no opportunity in Honeysuckle— it’s sweet but stagnant, and both women, and their loved ones pushing them out the door, know that to stay there would be something very bleak indeed. But leaving has its own risks too.
Jones is a writer and person of enormous discipline, it’s clear from a wonderful profile of her in the New York Times from this winter. Jones, who is from Atlanta but left after graduating from Spelman, returned to the city after writing American Marriage, her excellent 2018 novel which won the Women’s Prize. I was tickled to learn that she is a devoted writer of letters, writing 4-5 a week (!); letters figure in both Kin and American Marriage. From the archive, I enjoyed reading her old book reviews and this personal essay from 2005 about how she grew up, in her words, “black, Southern, and atheist.”
Jones’ Silver Sparrow (2011) was also excellent. I look forward to eventually reading her two early novels, including her first novel, Leaving Atlanta (2002), based on her master’s thesis, about growing up during the harrowing years of the serial Atlanta child murders of 1979-81.
Recommendation Corner
More on my audiobook journey… I am listening to Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987)— read by the author herself, as if she is pouring the words straight into your brain. Morrison has an amazing voice, and there’s something like communion in receiving the book straight from its creator. Revisiting it now that I have a child feels heavy, heavy. It’s been a beautiful foil to Kin; both are ghost stories in which the main characters are haunted by memories of a place, the small Louisiana hometown of Honeysuckle for Niecy and Annie, and for Sethe Sweet Home, the plantation where she was enslaved.
Just saw Maddie’s Secret, John Early’s directorial debut. Early filmed, produced, and stars in the movie, which follows a food influencer whose entry into fame brings up her issues with food. Theoretically a satire, sometimes it veers into straight darkness: the harrowing reality of bulimia. It’s not a perfect movie, but super thought-provoking. I loved that Early plays the female main character in it, a choice that’s made without comment or wink-winking— for me it felt like the choice gracefully removed the viewer from the cycle of objectification of women struggling with eating disorders in the media.
This corn and basil pasta recipe. Finding joy in fresh summer vegetables and remembering how good they can taste.
LOVED American Marriage! Thank you for putting Tyari Jones back on my favorite authors list. 🤩
Thanks for this, Eva! I meant to read American Marriage and it slipped off my radar. Will tackle that and Kin now, thanks to your recommendation.