In a high-end supermarket in Philadelphia, a 25-year-old African American woman is accused of kidnapping the white child she is babysitting. Emira wants to put the incident behind her, but two people will not let it go: Kelley, a man who recorded the interaction, and Alix, Emira’s employer. Such A Fun Age was published in the UK in at the start of 2020, which became the year when the concept of a ‘white saviour’ was particularly relevant. During the BLM protests that summer, social media was full of white people determined to prove that they were ‘one of the good ones’, often drowning out the voices that the movement was intended to help in the first place. Alix and Kelley’s clumsy attempts to do the right thing make for cringeworthy reading, but the novel isn’t mean spirited. Instead, it shows the consequences of ‘wokeness’ without genuine understanding, and the protagonist’s journey of learning what she wants rather than what others want for her. MG

Bloomsbury