Search - The Amateur Marriage

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.

Great book. Overall the story is about a marriage and how the two very different spouses interact with one another throughout their marriage. I felt like I could see bits of myself in both of the characters. It gave me new insights into how others may perceive me or how I perceive others incorrectly.

Amazon.com
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. If this all sounds a tad generic, Tyler's case isn't helped by the characteristics she's given the two spouses. Him: repressed, censorious, quiet. Her: voluble, emotional, romantic. Mars, meet Venus. What marks this couple, though, and what makes them come alive, is their bitter, unproductive, tooth-and-nail fighting. Tyler is exploring the way that ordinary-seeming, prosperous people can survive in emotional poverty for years on end. She gets just right the tricks Michael and Pauline play on themselves in order to stay together: "How many times," Pauline asks herself, "when she was weary of dealing with Michael, had she forced herself to recall the way he'd looked that first day? The slant of his fine cheekbones, the firming of his lips as he pressed the adhesive tape in place on her forehead." Only in antogonism do Michael and Pauline find a way to express themselves. --Claire Dederer

Thoroughly enjoyable. Characters are staying with me - I keep thinking about them.

Another wonderful book by Anne Tyler. I just love how she creates such vivid characters and moves from different points of view so effortlessly. This book spans the “amateur marriage� of Michael and Pauline. The story of their family--particularly Lindy--was interesting and involving.

Very good read, but IMO not as good as some of her others.