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Summary: Though Interesting Characters, Book is Anti-Climatic
Review: You grow to enjoy reading about these characters, but you hope for something more for them. You want to see the "do" something...but it very anti-climatic and you don't understand exactly why the people are the way they are. You want to know more of their thinking...
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Summary: One of Anne Tyler's best
Review: I agree with the earlier reviewers who found this one of Tyler's most rewarding books. It has a subtlety that's rare. Rather than imposing a happy or sad ending on her characters, she gives them life. The protagonists of THE AMATEUR MARRIAGE make each other (and often their family) miserable, and yet there is a way in which they continue to love each other. Tyler creates a world in which everything is not fixable; in which people make life hell for those they continue to love, and in which leaving, and possibly loneliness, are necessary.
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Summary: this "marriage" lacks Tyler's usual sparkle and humor
Review: This book is a slog read about a marriage that, while not abusive, is a sad mismatch stemming from a chance wartime meeting. There was young love and then some deeper love, in spite of all the senseless agitation and petty fighting. Unlike her previous novels, with their wonderful humor and tragedy in the mundane, none of the characters are endearing or interesting. Beyond his grocery store, the husband admits to himself that he has no interests, no friends, and is unhappy in his rigid routines from always preferring meat and potatoes to his hatred of travel. In contrast, his wife is very social, loves to cook, expresses her anger immediately rather than stew in it interminably, and is dying for variety as life passes her by. As a couple, they never develop common interests and never seem to accomodate their differences, living instead with raw, oozing wounds. It all adds up to a distressingly bleak and realistic portrayal of the nihilism at the center of so many marriages. Quite simply, these people are pathetic together and there isn't much that is funny about it. That is about it. I do not mean to say that this is not a good novel. Tyler has great talent. However, beyond the many insights in it, I did not find any pleasure in the reading. Moreover, the frame of the novel is a straight narrative over 50 years of so, shifting personal perspectives; this is not too imaginative. Recommended for serious Tyler fans and lovers of dreary marriage fiction.
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Summary: Great Characters
Review: Anne Tyler once again has created a cast of memorable characters, most notably the infuriating but touching Pauline. She shows the perils of marriage and the need to be extremely careful about picking your partners. I also liked the sweep of the book, stretching from World War II to the present. My only disappointment was the rather tidy ending, which I felt short-changed the complexity of the relationships and the characters. Even so, no Anne Tyler fan will want to miss her latest.
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Summary: The Amateur Marriage---recommend!
Review: If you are looking for a great story of family and real life "stuff" here it is. I was enthralled with this book and really enjoyed it. It is a well written real life story and if you have been through a marriage that didn't work but had trouble leaving it because it was "comfortable" you will understand. Highly recommend. Great author.
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Summary: Drawn out
Review: I read this book as a pick from a recently organized book club. I use organized loosely! We are a group of middle class married women, all of whom work full time. We chose this book to read for various reasons. I just finished it last evening, but I have to say, it took me a while to get through it. I do think that it was well written and like the fact that the story was told by several points of view, but it was slow and drawn out. I think that Tyler is trying to convey the all to common situation of the marriage that is mismatched or troubled and the feelings and situations that may arise from such a marriage. But, it is a novel and I just wanted something more to keep my attention. I was waiting for the return of "Lindy" in the story but again was disappointed with the lack of interesting delivery and story line. Again, I think the writing, meaning the way the story was written, was very good. I just thought that the story fell short of my expections.
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Summary: A beautifully told tale
Review: I finished reading this book this morning and I am still pretty melancholy about this modern-day saga. It's a fantastic book that spans generations of the Anton family in Baltimore. It's family legacy of humanity brought into being by Pauline & Michael. We meet them in their twenties and we live through their lives, the lives of their children, and then the lives of their children's children until Pauline and Michael grow into old age. We never know what will happen in life, you never know what may happen as a result of decisions you make and you never really know what is right and what is wrong, what you should do and what you shouldn't. In the end, this is a beautifully told tale of family, struggle, principle, choices, heartache, and joy. I'm off to get the Kleenex.
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Summary: Not her best...
Review: I have read at least 10 of Tyler's books, and have loved almost all of them. Unfortunately, this one just falls short from the get-go. I stuck with it, hoping it would pick up, but it just never happened for me. The characters are just not very likeable; I did not find myself endeared to any of them. Let's hope this is not the beginning of a downward trend!
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Summary: a departure
Review: I have read all Anne Tyler's books; some of them 3 and 4 times. They never fail to amaze with their sparkling prose and breathtaking eye for detail. This book has those qualities, but it is gently different. It retains Tyler's signature theme--families: you can't endure them and you can't escape them--but it does it in a more disjointed manner. Tyler traces the 30 year course of a mismatched marriage, and then its breakup, and the aftershocks and ramifications. Some have felt that Tyler leans too heavily in favor of Pauline, the free-spirit wife, and against Michael, the self-contained stoical husband. But she treats them both fairly, probing the inner doubts and loves of each. The point of view shifts from chapter to chapter, sometimes within the same chapter, so a different light is shed on events and so that characters can take full shape. The shifts cause a sense of dislocation; but this is appropriate
because the book is about the shocks, both inward and outward, that every family endures. One lasting shock is how the two main characters--Pauline and Michael--end. Miraculously, Tyler manages to convey a sense of terrible sadness and terrible elation all at once. This is a marvelous book. Any fan of Tyler will love it; and those who aren't fans are in for a widening of their horizons.
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Summary: A Rough, Rewarding Walk Down Memory Lane
Review: The Amateur Marriage reads more like an autopsy than a novel, a postmortem analysis of the chronological demise of a marriage. From the moment they meet, we know the union of Michael Anton and Pauline Barclay is not going to go well. He's quiet, reserved, and serious; she's loud, gregarious, and flighty; oil and water. She snips, he snarls; but boy, isn't the sex good after a good ole verbal knockdown, drag-out! And that is the crux of the first five chapters, roughly half the book: two people trapped inside the crucible of a seething, though occasionally sultry, marriage. For someone who has experienced divorce firsthand, both from the child and adult viewpoints, I was uncomfortable with this book at first, and almost put it down; the bickering seemed much too familiar. But Anne Tyler's writing is attractive, and I held in there. At least the sparring is only verbal, and not physically abusive. Which in some ways makes the dissolution much sadder; even past middle age, he's handsome, she's beautiful; he's thin as ever, she's still shapely; so why not make loving comments, instead of accusations and torrents of blame? Ah, but they are opposites, and while opposites attract, they also attack. Structurally, though there are various flashbacks and moments of reflection, the novel is mostly linear, and the book could have been divided into chapters labeled Forties, Fifties, Sixties, Seventies, Eighties, Nineties, and 2002. After starting with an omniscient (or community) viewpoint, which reflects the first chapter's theme of common knowledge ("Anyone in the neighborhood could tell you"; "Everyone said later that"), most of the following chapters are divided by personal viewpoint, his and hers, like angry towels hung over the decades. Even daughter Karen and son George have chapters devoted to their take on specific time periods. What is sadly missing is a chapter inside the head of Lindy, the oldest daughter, who decides the safe thing to do is just fade away, giving the novel perhaps its greatest mystery; now, that would have been a trip! Every novel, we are told, should have a protagonist and an antagonist, but here the main characters take turns being both. Perhaps the hero of this story is love and marriage and the villain is hate and divorce. Halfway through I was ready to shoot both parents and toss the oldest child over a cliff. Then, miraculously, I began to care for them all, very much. And when the reading was done, I missed them: the truest sign of a fine novel. By mid-point, I figured this was a three-star book. Two-thirds of the way through, I thought maybe four. By the time I read the final, heart-wrenching lines, I realized this was not just a story of two people, or even a single family; it reflects American life since World War II: a walk down memory lane, for many of us. The scope is broad, the effect long lasting. If personal enrichment is a genre, then this is where The Amateur Marriage fits. I would recommend this book, but in the same way I would recommend a skillful dentist: it isn't always entertaining, but it's probably good for you; and, if you're young and yet single, it may keep you from having cavities of the heart.
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