Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

Boots!

Where would we be without boos?

Where would we be without good?

No, into the bird.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we be without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt.

This is Bookworm, and my guest today is Tyari Jones.

She's the author most recently of an American marriage. There are those of you out there who are going

to be saying, isn't that the Oprah Winfrey book? And yes, it's the most recent book in the Oprah

Winfrey Book Club. And it's a marvelous novel, an American marriage. It's published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill.

It has basically three central characters, each of whom speak in the course of the book.

To me, when I read about a woman who makes dolls that look like her husband to be,

Roy, whose name is Celestial, I just fell in love with them.

Roy is going to make Celestial dolls into a whole business, a fortune.

He wants to sell them.

He wants them to be perfect.

He wants to help her become what she most wants to be an artist.

And here is a man and a wife to be practicing perfection if they can. They go off on essentially a honeymoon,

the husband who is something of a,

what do you call it, a flirt?

...