Such a Fun Age

“As it seemed, her entire existence had become annulled.” 

Emira’s horrific experience at Market Depot relies on several white people acting in racist ways, from a mother who calls security to the security guard himself. As the tensions escalate, the security guard, a white man, ignores Emira to try to talk to two-year-old Briar. This kind of ignorant behavior is a common racist interaction where a white person privileges the opinion of another white person over that of a person of color no matter how inappropriate it may be in the circumstances. 

“But then, seemingly all at once, Briar started talking.”

When Briar starts talking, Alix loses her sense of wonder at her small child and begins having difficulty enjoying her time with her daughter. This kind of experience can be common for mothers who spend a significant amount of time with their young children, especially if the father is more absent, like in Peter’s case. Alix’s difficulty maintaining a positive relationship with her daughter is an underlying conflict throughout the novel. 

“She wanted to be able to replace it with something, rather than a passionless negative space.” 

Emira has enormous difficulty navigating life as a 20-something with little idea about what passions drive her. She lies through omission to her parents about what she is doing in Philadelphia, hoping to remedy her lack of a career by the time she has to share news with them. It will take the entire novel before Emira finds her way into something that requires her passion and energy more than babysitting Briar or typing as a transcriptionist. 

“Alix knew that this probably wouldn’t have been so daunting if it wouldn’t be the longest conversation she’d ever had with Emira.” 

Alix consistently only acts in ways that serve her own interests; she doesn’t feel the need to talk to Emira or get to know her until it’s relevant to Alix’s own wants and desires. As Alix begins to get to know Emira, though, Alix also plays out her own racist beliefs as she becomes more and more obsessed with Emira without knowing very much about her at all. Alix crafts a version of Emira in her head that is actually different from the real person in front of her.

“But WNFT’s reaction to the toothed hole in the window was a strange home-court pride mixed with backslapping joy.” 

After Peter Chamberlain says something racist on live TV, Alix worries incessantly about how his colleagues and their new community will perceive him. Yet Peter receives a mostly positive interaction. This is a critical window into seeing the larger social landscape that the Chamberlains are a part of: racism as a harmless, accidental thing that can happen to anyone. 

“Kill me, she typed. I hate everyone here.” 

Though Alix graciously hosts Peter’s new coworkers and tries to adjust to life in Philadelphia (which had been her idea in the first place), she struggles to find her place, wishing she was still in New York. To some extent, Alix’s consistent difficulty with living in Pennsylvania has to do with her own slide into being farther from the glamorous, polished career that she had envisioned. The longer Alix is in Pennsylvania, the less she focuses on her work writing letters and on maintaining her physique and the more she focuses on petty issues and self-serving indulgence. 

“Emira feigned reluctance; she was enjoying this as much as he was.” 

Though Kelley and Emira eventually deal with the tensions caused by their extremely differing backgrounds, in the beginning of their relationship their interactions stem from a tense flirtatiousness in which they both play hard-to-get. Both Emira and Kelley “enjoy” the back and forth of their new relationship, but this eventually becomes a conflict between them as they each try to maintain control over the other. 

“Alix had developed feelings toward Emira that weren’t completely unlike a crush.” 

The obsession that Alix develops with Emira is rooted in deep racist thought patterns and values that allow Alix to both preoccupy herself with Emira’s appearance and behaviors as well as become intensely controlling and calculating in order to get Emira to like her more. It is likely that Alix develops these feelings not because Emira is attractive or interesting but because Alix views Emira as an exotic woman of color for Alix to act out her racist fantasies on.

“But my boss has been really into asking me questions and wanting to talk.” 

Though Emira can’t completely decipher why Alix directs so much interest towards her after the Market Depot incident, she does notice it and respond by withdrawing from Alix. An important undercurrent of the novel is the ways that transactional relationships, like that of a babysitter and the parent who pays them, rely on the person providing the service to act like the person paying them is important. Reid exposes this through Emira’s quiet resistance to Alix’s friendship: Even though Emira privately reflects on her boss being strange toward her, she remains polite and kind to Alix in person in order to maintain her business relationship. 

“She settled on, You know what? Imma let you get away with that too.” 

In order to maintain a positive relationship with Kelley, Emira has to consistently let him “get away” with things like saying racist language or acting like he comes from a working-class background, though she secretly judges him for these events. Her private reflections on Kelley’s behavior hint at the eventuality of their break-up: It is almost impossible to consistently dislike someone’s inappropriate behavior and maintain a respectful relationship with them. 

“By this point, Kelley was a key member of Robbie Cormier’s clique, and Alex had been officially exiled from all high school activities.” 

After calling the police on Robbie Cormier and his group of friends, who trespassed on her family’s property, Alex is “exiled” from high school social life while Kelley, who picked up Robbie from jail, rises to a higher status. Alex blames the entire series of events on Kelley, despite the fact that it is entirely her fault: She wrote the letter giving Kelley directions to her house, she dropped it in his locker (where it fell into Robbie Cormier’s), and she called the police. Alix’s ability to deflect and ignore shines in this instance and continues throughout the novel. 

“Or maybe it had more to do with the fact that Emira had witnessed Mrs. Chamberlain being an outstanding mother, and was realizing that when she wasn’t being one, it was by choice rather than default.” 

In this observation, Emira reveals a vital piece of the plot of the novel. Alix’s “choice” to ignore and disregard Briar, her older child, is a part of her larger patterns of behavior. Overall, Alix is a person who only does what interests or helps her, with little regard for the other people she impacts. Emira’s role in the novel is partly to expose Alix’s self-serving nature and make clear how damaging it is, both for Briar and for the other people in Alix’s life. 

“Alix fantasized about Emira discovering things about her that shaped what Alix saw as the truest version of herself. Like the fact that one of Alix’s closest friends was also black.” 

Part of Alix’s racism is that she tokenizes all people of color in her life, including Tamra, one of her “closest friends.” This is an important aspect of racism because it is so common in American culture. White people frequently use people of color as props in their search to be seen as good white people; Alix is a prime example of this especially because she is so ignorant as to the actual “truest version of herself,” preferring to think of herself as tolerant and open-minded.  

“You can use the computer there.” 

Alix frequently tries to appear generous and giving to Emira, but this generosity backfires on Emira by giving Alix greater access to Emira’s life. In this instance, by using the computer in Alix’s home, Emira opens up the possibility of Alix being able to see Emira’s Gmail account, which later leads to Alix leaking the Market Depot video. In this way, even Alix’s generosity becomes a feature of her self-serving behavior. 

“On top of his unbelievable presence on Alix’s front stoop, the way he’d said her name had momentarily paralyzed her. Alex. It sounded whiny and pedestrian.” 

Alix Chamberlain’s carefully crafted persona has gotten her as far away from Allentown and high school as possible, yet she relives her “pedestrian” past when Kelley appears at her house on Emira’s arm for Thanksgiving. It is difficult for Alix to psychologically reconcile her two worlds, past and present, coming together in one moment, and she spends the rest of the night almost lost for words, panicking about how Kelley perceives her new life. This cognitive dissonance is not surprising given how hard Alix has worked to separate herself from her past, no matter how clear it is that she is very much the same desperate, ignorant girl she was in high school. 

“I don’t like when Catherine bees the littlest favorite to Mama. I don’t like that.” 

In a remarkable rush of self-expression, Briar tells Emira what has really been making her upset: her mother’s clear favoritism to Catherine. Though Emira comforts the young child by telling her that families don’t have favorites, this is an important turning point for Emira to begin embracing her own outrage over Alix’s obvious neglect of her eldest daughter. This is also an important reflection of the careful way that Reid develops Briar’s character as a full, thoughtful person, rather than a quiet, supplementary child in the background of the novel’s plot. 

“The idea of Kelley truly having feelings for Emira seemed slightly worse than him using her for his own gain. Just the thought of it put a sharp buzzing sound into her head.” 

In one of the first moments in which Alix actually wrestles with her own paternalistic feelings towards Emira, she almost allows herself to realize that it is her jealousy, not her thoughtfulness, that makes her protective towards Emira. Yet her psychological disfunction will not allow this level of reflection, so a “sharp buzzing sound” fills her head. This kind of anxiety and panic is frequent for Alix when she faces a conflict she cannot control. 

“But now she sat in Philadelphia, participating in a losing game called ‘Which One of Us Is Actually More Racist?” 

The conflict between Kelley and Alix comes to a head over their relationships with Emira, who is a way for them to measure who is “More Racist” than the other. Unfortunately for both characters, they reveal their racism more through this interaction than even through their interactions with Emira; they both believe it is okay to battle it out for Emira’s affections and loyalty without giving Emira her own right to choose. These patterns of behavior are both typical for Kelley and Alix as well as more common for many white people in general in the United States.

“I’m getting your shit, and then I hear that woman ask if she’d done the right thing […] And then that Uncle Tom Tamra woman told her, ‘one hundred percent,’ and that this video is the best thing to ever happen to you.” 

When Zara figures out that Alix was the person who intentionally leaked the video of Emira at Market Depot, it prompts the resolving conflict of the novel. It’s important to note that Alix’s intentions—whether or not she did “the right thing”—don’t matter in the end for Emira or Zara. What matters is whether or not Emira can have control over her own life and choices, which Alix has taken away. In the end, Alix’s racist paternalism towards Emira backfires, causing Emira to separate from the Chamberlains forever. 

“We ain’t doin’ this mammy shit no more. Next.” 

In the only reference to a “mammy” in the novel, Zara pushes Emira to find a job that isn’t babysitting or working as a nanny. The mammy trope comes from the legacy of racism in the United States; black women have historically been, through enslavement and then through unfair class systems, the predominant caretakers for white children. As Emira develops a new sense of confidence in herself, she is able to break away from relying on a racist white woman for her monthly rent payments. 

“I just think it would be best if we went our separate ways and […] that those paths never like […] came back together.” 

In one of her most powerful spoken moments, Emira uses the same break-up line that Kelley used against young Alex Murphy to shut down Alix Chamberlain on live television. Though Emira doesn’t do anything more to publicly humiliate Alix or expose her, this choice of phrasing is significant to Alix and feels devastating for the wealthy white woman. This choice reflects Emira’s frustration with working for Alix as well as Emira’s developing maturity and confidence. 

“But you gotta act like you like Briar once in a while.” 

One of Emira’s last statements to Alix is a plea that Alix begin parenting Briar with more love and affection. For the young babysitter, this is a critical opportunity to support Alix to change her behavior; Emira feels desperate to improve Briar’s circumstances but knows she cannot stay with the Chamberlain family anymore. 

“Believing that Kelley was the starting point of her adversity would always be easier than believing she’d simply slipped through an unlucky crack. The choice to believe otherwise, to pretend there weren’t coffee-colored letters pressed into her chest, would keep her close to him, even if staying close to Kelley meant holding a grudge for something that he never did.” 

In a vitally important revelation, the final chapter through Alix’s perspective shows Alex Murphy cleaning out the 12th-grade student lockers and figuring out that Kelley had never received several of her letters—they had in fact fallen into Robbie Cormier’s locker. Yet young Alex does not forgive Kelley or admit complicity in Robbie’s arrest; instead, she buries this knowledge and chooses to believe that “Kelley was the starting point of her adversity.” This also reveals why Alix feels so romantically interested in Kelley when he reappears in her adult life: She never actually stopped obsessing over him.