Tayari Jones's first novel, LEAVING ATLANTA, was a sensitive tale
of children growing up during the Atlanta child murders, told from
their perspective. The children of her second novel THE UNTELLING,
also set in Atlanta, are all grown up and living with the scars of
childhood. This time the story is told from the viewpoint of
Ariadne Jackson, who likes to be called Aria, a woman in her
twenties whose life was shaped by the death of her father and
infant sister when she was a young girl. The deaths changed the
surviving members of the family, Aria, her mother and her sister
Hermione.

After the accident, Aria and Hermione's mother becomes a cruel and
unpredictable parent whose irrational behavior forces Hermione out
of their lives. Both women have strained relationships with her as
adults.

At the beginning of the novel Aria realizes she is pregnant and
decides the unexpected child is good news. She is nauseous but
hopeful that once she tells her boyfriend he will become her
fiancé and they'll marry. Yet she makes the mistake of sharing
her good news with someone else first. When she does tell Dwayne,
he is true to her vision of him and proposes. Though Aria is sad
she won't have the kind of elaborate, non-pregnancy-induced wedding
that her roommate Rochelle is planning, she is happy with
Dwayne.

Then terrible news changes everything for her and, though he
doesn't know it, Dwayne. Aria decides to withhold the devastating
information from Dwayne and desperately works to keep up the lie.
As she tries to salvage their future with lies, she tears down any
hope of their happiness.

The strength of Tayari Jones's writing is that she can tell this
story, a much simpler one than LEAVING ATLANTA, in such a
compelling way. She captures the nuances of emotion that Aria
experiences along the path to her personal tragedy and her
self-inflicted descent into heartbreak.

Along the way Jones allows the girl Aria to surface and show how
deeply the accident that took her father and sister scarred the
mother and surviving sisters. It is a hard story to forget. And
that's as it should be.