A global superlead, bought in a huge ten-way auction, Such a Fun Age is a big-hearted story about race, privilege and what it means to be family.

‘A huge in-house favourite of the whole team at Bloomsbury Sydney, this deserves all the international buzz it’s generating. Kiley’s razor-sharp humour will have you cringing when you recognise yourself, but her writing is also so warm and empathetic. It’s delicious—do read it!’
Liz Bray, Managing Director of Bloomsbury Australia

‘I read Such a Fun Age in two sittings—it’s really great! Totally compulsive reading—a smart storyline, very well plotted, and such well-drawn characters’
Alison Huber, Readings

Alix Chamberlain is a woman who gets what she wants and has made a living showing other women how to do the same. So she is shocked when her young black babysitter, Emira Tucker, is accused by a security guard of kidnapping the Chamberlains’ toddler at the supermarket one night. A small crowd gathers, a bystander films everything, and Emira is furious and humiliated. Alix resolves to make it right.

But Emira herself is aimless, broke and wary of Alix’s desire to help. When the video of Emira unearths someone from Alix’s past, both women find themselves on a crash course that will upend everything they think they know about themselves, and each other.

With empathy and piercing social commentary, Such a Fun Age explores the awkwardness of transactional relationships, what it means to make someone ‘family’, the complicated reality of being a grown-up and the consequences of doing the right thing for the wrong reason.

Such a Fun Age
Published: 7 January 2020
Format: Trade Paperback
ISBN: 9781526612151
RRP: $29.99

‘Kiley Reid writes with a deceptively easy prose, and a forensic eye for the emotional self-sabotage and hypocrisies that make us human. I couldn’t put this down.’
Jojo Moyes

‘I loved this. I think it will have the same impact as Sally Rooney … wry and intricately observed.’
Pandora Sykes

‘The first time in a long time that I had a novel glued to my hands for two days. This so seldom happens to me. It is so good! So funny, so apposite to basically EVERYTHING going on right now, so touching, so tender, just utterly phenomenal.’
Jessie Burton

‘This is not a world of easy answers but one in which intentions don’t match actions and expectations don’t match consequences, where it is possible to mean something partly good and do something mostly bad. The result is both unsparing and compassionate, impossible to read without wincing in recognition—and questioning yourself. Such a Fun Age is nothing short of brilliant, and Kiley Reid is a writer we need now.’
Chloe Benjamin

‘Kiley Reid has delivered a poignant novel that could not be more necessary.’
Lena Waithe

‘A startling, razor-sharp debut. Kiley Reid has written a book with no easy answers, instead filling her story with delicious grey areas and flawed points of view. It’s both wildly fun and breathtakingly wise, deftly and confidently confronting issues of race, class, and privilege. I have to admit, I’m in awe.’
Taylor Jenkins Reid

‘Kiley Reid’s witty debut asks complicated questions around race, domestic work, and the transactional nature of each.’
Nafissa Thompson-Spires

‘Kiley Reid’s propulsive, page-turning book is full of complex characters and even more complex truths – this is a bullseye of a debut.’
Emma Straub

‘Reid excels at depicting subtle variations and manifestations of self-doubt, and astutely illustrates how, when coupled with unrecognised white privilege, this emotional and professional insecurity can result in unintended—as well as wilfully unseen—consequences. This is an impressive, memorable first outing.’
Publishers Weekly 

‘Gripping, substantive, complicated, compelling and just plain true … Such a fantastic, serious and, I should say, fun read.’
Paul Harding

‘This is a deft coming-of-age story for the current American moment, one written so confidently it’s hard to believe it’s a first novel.’
Rumaan Alam

‘Kiley Reid has written a timely novel that asks what we owe to those we care for in this complicated world. With intimate, touching observations, Reid details the lives of two complicated, loving women who are trying to figure out how to live their best lives in a world that does not always make space for them to do so.’
Kaitlyn Greenidge

Between 2007 and 2014, I babysat for over fifty families in New York City. There were a lot of diapers, so many songs, and small, sweet moments where time seemed to slow down. While many of these children wouldn’t remember me, I would always be the one who taught them what the word ‘pollen’ meant, or ‘purpose’, or maybe ‘eyelashes’. Even the most difficult children were prime examples that all people, of all ages, have fantastic qualities and strengths, mixed with what began as good intentions, whether or not their actions match. This was a guiding principle I used while crafting the adults and children as I crafted my first novel: Such A Fun Age. 

As a writer, I like to take massive socioeconomic issues, and whittle them down to their smallest, domestic, and almost petty parts. After my time as a babysitter, I attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop where I had stretches of time and space to delve into the nature of systemic racism and classism in America. The combination of these two interests—the sweetness of children learning to navigate the world, and the hidden biases of the people around them—came together in these pages.

• Unmissable global campaign to make this the book of 2019
• Two rounds of early ARCs are being sent out to booksellers, media, festivals and literary influencers to continue building buzz ahead of publication
• Pre-publication author visit to Australia, which will be jam-packed with bookseller visits, advanced media and influencer buzz building
• Film and TV rights already snapped up by Lena Waithe’s award winning Studio. Waithe previously won an Emmy for Master of None.
• Huge digital and print marketing campaign in the lead-up to and on publication
• Guaranteed national review and media coverage in print, broadcast and online.

Click here to read the gripping first chapter that everyone is talking about.

Be one of the first people to read Such a Fun Age! For your chance to win one of 20 reading copies, email Genevieve.Nelsson@bloomsbury.com with ‘SUCH A FUN AGE’ in the subject line.