Pamela M. (Pyan) reviewed on 5/25/2005 + 106 more book reviews

This is the story of an ordinary marriage, extraordinarily told.

It's a generational story about the Anton family, focusing mainly on Pauline and Michael. They meet during WWII, fall in love, have a hasty wedding and start their lives.

As we learn, though, they never should have married one another. Pauline and Michael just can't seem to get the grasp of the whole "married" thing, and life is a roller coaster of good times and bad for them and their children.

Each chapter begins years down the road from the previous one, and is sometimes told by different points of view. Mainly Pauline tells the story, but as her children age, we get to hear their side of things as well. Overall the story spans about 60 years.

I would definitely recommend this. There is no happy ending here, at least not in the fairy-tale sense of the word, but it's as realistic a portrait of marriage (along with the real problems often faced by families) as I have ever read.

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