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The Amateur Marriage

A Novel

By Anne Tyler

(34)

| Hardcover | 9781400042074

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Book Description

From the inimitable Anne Tyler, a rich and compelling novel about a mismatched marriage—and its consequences, spanning three generations.

They seemed like the perfect couple—young, good-looking, made for each other. The moment Pauline, a stranger to the Polish Eastern Avenue neighContinue

From the inimitable Anne Tyler, a rich and compelling novel about a mismatched marriage—and its consequences, spanning three generations.

They seemed like the perfect couple—young, good-looking, made for each other. The moment Pauline, a stranger to the Polish Eastern Avenue neighborhood of Baltimore (though she lived only twenty minutes away), walked into his mother’s grocery store, Michael was smitten. And in the heat of World War II fervor, they are propelled into a hasty wedding. But they never should have married.

Pauline, impulsive, impractical, tumbles hit-or-miss through life; Michael, plodding, cautious, judgmental, proceeds deliberately. While other young marrieds, equally ignorant at the start, seemed to grow more seasoned, Pauline and Michael remain amateurs. In time their foolish quarrels take their toll. Even when they find themselves, almost thirty years later, loving, instant parents to a little grandson named Pagan, whom they rescue from Haight-Ashbury, they still cannot bridge their deep-rooted differences. Flighty Pauline clings to the notion that the rifts can always be patched. To the unyielding Michael, they become unbearable.

From the sound of the cash register in the old grocery to the counterculture jargon of the sixties, from the miniskirts to the multilayered apparel of later years, Anne Tyler captures the evocative nuances of everyday life during these decades with such telling precision that every page brings smiles of recognition. Throughout, as each of the competing voices bears witness, we are drawn ever more fully into the complex entanglements of family life in this wise, embracing, and deeply perceptive novel.

Critics

  • 'The Amateur Marriage' by Anne Tyler

    These questions -- and so many more -- form the backbone of this astonishingly perceptive and near-perfect novel by Anne Tyler. The Amateur Marriage spans three generations of one family living in suburban Baltimore. It charts the course of one coupl ... (read full critics)

    readingmatters published on Mon, 27 Sep 2010

  • It's not only the marriage that disintegrates

    The Amateur Marriage by Anne Tyler Chatto £10.99, pp306 Anne Tyler is a great writer and in a great rut. Though her considerable British following will pounce on The Amateur Marriage, only the hard core of fans, for whom she can do no wrong, will be ... (read full critics)

    guardian.co.uk published on Sat, 25 Sep 2010

5 Reviews

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  • An everyday family's experience elevated to a good read.

    The story of the marriage of Michael and Pauline, a mismatched couple if their ever was one. The main dramatic event in their marriage is the disappearance of their eldest daughter in the sixties, but that is jumping ahead rather. Michael ... (continue)

    An everyday family's experience elevated to a good read.

    The story of the marriage of Michael and Pauline, a mismatched couple if their ever was one. The main dramatic event in their marriage is the disappearance of their eldest daughter in the sixties, but that is jumping ahead rather. Michael Anton is of Polish descent and works in the family grocery business, his world changes when Pauline Barclay walks into the store in December 1941. To Michael she is from an exotic world and he finds himself irrevocably drawn to her even making the patriotic or was it romantic gesture of joining the armed forces because of her influence on him. Their marriage becomes somehow inevitable.when before his training is even completed he gets wounded so badly that he is invalided out.

    Pauline believed that marriage was an interweaving of souls, while Michael viewed it as two people traveling side by side but separately. Two such different opinions of course lead to resentments but somehow they stay together. The birth of three children, a move to the suburbs, all normal life events for many but then their daughter disappears, a catalyst for the cracks to deepen.

    Each chapter of the book leaps ahead in time to different stages of their marriage with changes having taken place that you have not actually read about, but somehow this does not spoil the narrative. In fact for me it helped make it more readable, otherwise it may have been a rather long winded marriage tale!

    Anne Tyler’s characters despite their idiosyncrasies seem very feasible and familiar to me. I have not read that many of her books but I found the previous ones interesting for the same reasons. Back When We Were Grownups and Digging to America.

    If you are a fan of Anne Tyler you have probably also already read this one, I am somewhat behind. If you are new to her work, I think it is a good introduction to her writing.

    For additional author info please visit LindyLouMac's Book Reviews
    http://lindyloumacbookreviews.blogspot.com/2012/02/amat…

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    Lindyloumac said on Feb 21, 2012 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

  • Not a comment. Don't take this book too seriously. Before I read more books of Anne Tyler, I can't call it a failure or a success now. I got through it and was tortured. I plan to read it again with the help of a dictionary.

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    Ephemera said on May 30, 2009 | Add your feedback

  • It's not a happy marriage, every person is amateur when it comes to marriage. I t's kind of sad to read this book, but it's a very good read.

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    S.E. said on Feb 4, 2009 about the Others edition | Add your feedback

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