Oprah Winfrey has selected Tayari Jones’ Kin as the latest pick for her book club.
The novel, published Tuesday by Knopf, follows the long friendship between Vernice and Annie, who both grew up in Louisiana in the 1950s and lost their mothers when they were children. In a starred review, a critic for Kirkus called the book “beautifully written and powerfully compelling.” The novel is Jones’ first since An American Marriage, also an Oprah’s Book Club pick, which was published in 2018 and won the Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Aspen Words Literary Prize.
Winfrey announced the book’s selection on CBS Mornings, saying, “This will become a classic book, I just know it is true, and the reason is because the writing is so profoundly eloquent but also familiar. I felt like I had gone home to myself. I felt like I was sitting in my grandmother’s kitchen.…It just felt like a ‘welcome home’ reunion. I was just waiting on some sweet potato pie and some PET Milk to show up.”
Jones said that she was originally contracted to write a novel set in contemporary Atlanta, but that she changed the setting early in the writing process.
“The story didn’t have that intangible thing that lets you know you’re making art,” she said. “So I just decided to stop trying to control everything, and I just started what I call ‘word doodling.’ I was writing whatever came to mind, and that is when I met Annie and Vernice, and the year was 1958.”
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
