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The Amateur Marriage
The Amateur Marriage
Author: Anne Tyler
Marrying quickly during World War II after falling in love at first sight, a mismatched couple discovers that their different personalities and approaches to life are taking a toll on their relationship and their family.
Info icon
ISBN-13: 9781400042074
ISBN-10: 1400042070
Publication Date: 2004
Pages: 320
Rating:
  • Currently 3.5/5 Stars.
 97

3.5 stars, based on 97 ratings
Publisher: Knopf
Book Type: Hardcover
Other Versions: Paperback, Audio Cassette, Audio CD
Reviews: Member | Amazon | Write a Review

Top Member Book Reviews

reviewed The Amateur Marriage on + 92 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 3
Anne Tyler presents a warm and insightful view of a couple's life together, starting in the 1940's (World War II) through 1990. The author captures the nuances of everyday life, depicting the passing of the decades with precision. Bringing smiles of recognition, this book is disarming and deceptive, wise and observant. Recommended to all who are, have been or would like to be in an exclusive, committed relationship.
reviewed The Amateur Marriage on + 113 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 3
Couldn't finish this one. Could not hold my interest. Anne Tyler tries to hard with this one, in my opnion, and the writing seems forced with many cliches.
reviewed The Amateur Marriage on + 412 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 2
A terrific book that honestly explores the complexities of families and relationships.
bup avatar reviewed The Amateur Marriage on + 165 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 2
You want me to give you a reasoned analysis of the book and I just can't. Not with this one. I just finished it, I loved it, I'm devastated it's over, it's a completely emotional response, and I'm scared if I think about it too much I'll be embarrassed at how much I liked it. So, sorry. Not gonna do it. I love this book too much to examine whether it deserves my love and respect.
cay avatar reviewed The Amateur Marriage on + 63 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 2
Anne Tyler draws a vivid picture of the domestic ups and downs of a couple who meet and marry hastily in the 1940s, and follows them throughout their lives. Their interactions affect not only themselves, but their children and their children's children in dramatic, sometimes funny, sometimes tragic ways. A great read.
Read All 55 Book Reviews of "The Amateur Marriage"

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mrscasler avatar reviewed The Amateur Marriage on + 3 more book reviews
Awesome book! Makes you think! :)
reviewed The Amateur Marriage on
A book that draws you into the lives of the two main characters. Decent people, but in a marriage that should never have been. Another good story from Tyler.
reviewed The Amateur Marriage on + 4 more book reviews
I love Anne Tyler!
mywoodybird avatar reviewed The Amateur Marriage on + 28 more book reviews
very interesting and well written
reviewed The Amateur Marriage on + 40 more book reviews
Anne Tyler, prolific author of Breathing Lessons (made into a movie), writes this evocative novel.
Pauline and Michael seemed like the perfect couple--young, good-looking, made for each other. Set during WW II, it seems that while other couples grow more seasoned, these two remain amateurs. Still, they go on, "feuding, fussing and fighting." They have 3 children; one becomes a runaway in the turbulent 60's era. Pauline and Michael must rescue their little grandson from their "flower-child" daughter. "Tune in, turn on, and drop out," might have been the advice of Timothy O'Leary, but what about the damage that leaves behind?
In this embracing and perceptive novel, Anne Tyler captures the nuances of everyday life with such telling precision that every page brings nods of recognition.
reviewed The Amateur Marriage on + 75 more book reviews
Michael & Pauline seemed like the perfect couple - young, good looking, made for each other. The moment she walked into his mother's grocery store in the Polish quarter of Balitmore, he was smitten. And in the heat of WW II fervour, they marry in haste. In this achingly poingnant & unforgettable novel Tyler turns marriage inside out, to show us how attitudes trickle down the generations & marriage moulds its partners, for better or worse.
reviewed The Amateur Marriage on + 158 more book reviews
Some parts might be "R" rated!
fullybooked avatar reviewed The Amateur Marriage on + 61 more book reviews
Great writing. Typical of Tyler - always a bit depressing.
reviewed The Amateur Marriage on + 67 more book reviews
Very good book about a marriage over many years.
reviewed The Amateur Marriage on + 13 more book reviews
Another fast, good read from Tyler.
caffeinegirl avatar reviewed The Amateur Marriage on + 114 more book reviews
I usually love Anne Tyler's novels, but this one left me lukewarm. Although it is, like her other novels, thoughtful and well written, I didn't get much from it. The characters live, age, etc. Huh.

After reading it, I learned that Tyler had intended to keep writing this book for her entire life, weaving new parts of the family into it and extending it back in time. She saw it as a work without an ending. This helps explain the lack of structure. Also, I'm not sure that this kind of work qualifies as a novel? Either way, it was lovely but totally missable.
emeraldfire avatar reviewed The Amateur Marriage on
From the very beginning, everyone who knew Michael and Pauline could tell that they were absolutely meant to be together. As a couple, they seemed to be perfectly matched: young, good-looking, made for each other. As a matter of fact, their first meeting with each other seemed to be almost like a scene from a romantic novel or some old Hollywood movie.

The moment Pauline - a stranger to the Polish neighborhood of Eastern Avenue in Baltimore, even though she lived only twenty minutes away - walked into his mother's grocery store, Michael is completely smitten. Pauline steps into the store as a damsel in distress, and Michael becomes her hero. And in the heat of World War II fervor, they are propelled into a hasty marriage. Yet, this is definitely a couple who never should have married.

Pauline, impulsive and impractical, tumbles headlong through life and takes to marriage in a relatively hit-or-miss fashion. Michael, serious and deliberate all throughout his life, proceeds into marriage in exactly the same precise and measured way - dealing with Pauline and her various issues in a fairly judgemental and predictable fashion. And, in time - while other young married couples who were equally as inept from the beginning seemed to grow more seasoned and settled in their own marriages - both Michael and Pauline remained amateurs. Over time, the couple's foolish and petty quarrels inevitably take their toll.

Even when they find themselves - almost three decades later - loving, instant parents to their little three-year-old grandson named Pagan, whom they rescue from Haight-Ashbury, Michael and Pauline still seem unable to bridge the cavernous distance created by their deep-rooted differences. For flighty Pauline - who clings to the notion that given enough time, all things wrong can be made right again - the rifts in their marriage can always be patched. Yet to the unyielding Michael, their differences have become unbearable.

I must say that I absolutely loved reading this book. In my opinion, Anne Tyler is thoughtful and measured in her writing style; deeply invested in the development of her characters and plots. She is actually a tremendous writer.

I am always amazed at how easily I can get lost in her stories. To me, they never seem forced or disjointed. This book was equally as easy to read and to get lost in; there was a poignancy and a realistic quality to this plot that I thoroughly enjoyed. I give this book an A+!
reviewed The Amateur Marriage on + 8 more book reviews
Thoroughly enjoyable. Characters are staying with me - I keep thinking about them.
reviewed The Amateur Marriage on + 57 more book reviews
Anne Tyler's The Amateur Marriage is not so much a novel as a really long argument. Michael is a good boy from a Polish neighborhood in Baltimore; Pauline is a harum-scarum, bright-cheeked girl who blows into Michael's family's grocery store at the outset of World War II. She appears with a bloodied brow, supported by a gaggle of girlfriends. Michael patches her up, and neither of them are ever the same. Well, not the same as they were before, but pretty much the same as everyone else. After the war, they live over the shop with Michael's mother till they've saved enough to move to the suburbs. There they remain with their three children, until the onset of the sixties, when their eldest daughter runs away to San Francisco. Their marriage survives for a while, finally crumbling in the seventies.


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