Rating: 
Summary: A "Marriage" not made in heaven
Review: Anne Tyler's "Amateur Marriage" seems rather amateurish itself. It's basically about marital bickering that lasts a lifetime, between two people who were never willing to work on what they had. Tyler has plenty of promise here, but it's bogged down by lackluster writing and a very by-the-numbers plot.Michael Anton was a reserved Polish boy, who fell for the beautiful Pauline Barclay when he first met her in the early 1940s. She was suffering a minor injury from a patriotic demonstration, and he bandaged her wound. After the war is over, they marry, but they don't quite settle into suburban bliss. Why? Well, contrary to appearances, they are not suited to one another. He is controlled, reserved and cold. She is ebullient and outgoing. And while some couples can make "opposites attract," Michael and Pauline simply drive each other nuts. They have three children, cling to their ever-dying marriage over the years, until a family crisis involving their young daughter causes a permanent problem for these long-suffering "amateurs." Pauline and Michael, if they were real, would be ideal examples of why you should get to know your fiancee before you get married. In fact, forget that: don't even get engaged before knowing the person! "Amateur Marriage" succeeds in being a sobering, rather depressing look at a marriage that should never have taken place. The biggest problem with this book is that it seems like Tyler wrote it on autopilot. The marriage's disintegration is pretty tedious to watch, and there's no feeling that it's building up to some sort of climax. When the book ends, it's not a relief or a shock -- just sort of "oh, that's it." The fast-forwarding through the years of their marriage also makes it hard to get a handle on how things are going for them. Even the description of the cultural shifts of the sixties and seventies are, simply put, rather dull. Her writing is quite nice, but it fails to cover up the plodding plot. It's also rather hard to really connect with the characters. Through the first third of the book, it seems like Pauline and Michael have plenty of promise. They're both closed off to one another, unwilling to heal the rifts, and thus perfectly suited to this novel. But unfortunately, they also get on the reader's nerves with their ceaseless bickering and superficiality. The spark is missing in "Amateur Marriage." Die hard fans of Tyler may run to read it, but it's unlikely to draw any new fans in with its plodding, poorly-utilized plot.
Rating: 
Summary: A Masterful Portrait of Love -- By Portraying Its Absence
Review: Anne Tyler's skills have never glowed brighter than in this novel, but if you're looking for a nice sentimental tale, Tyler's not going to give you what you want. This is a story of people who live together through habit and rationalization and a fair amount of delusion and are angered that happiness doesn't fall into place for them. Many unhappy people in the world see the world this way, and it's never been so wonderfully portrayed as in this novel. Like real people, you'll be pleading with these characters to open their eyes to their own selfishness and passive-aggressive behaviors. Through contrast however, Tyler seems to be saying: Do you see yourself in these people? Then change! I think anyone will identify at least in part with some of these characters, but Tyler is showing us lives not spent wisely, by people who never move beyond "amateur" status as human beings. For those who would complain that Tyler is not giving any answers in this book, I think she is, but you need to fill in some of the blanks yourself. "The Accidental Tourist" provided deep satisfaction as a story, but if you dig beneath the surface, "The Amateur Marriage" might let you find the same kind of satisfaction in your own story. Love and happiness are not reached according to the paths followed in this story, but sometimes, seeing the wrong way to go provides insight into the right way. This book is a gift you can give yourself, but you'll need to be open to the experience, and you'll need to be an active participant.
Rating:
Summary: If you want to be depressed, then this one's for you....
Review: In "The Amateur Marriage", Anne Tyler captures the truth of a group of people -- but there is nothing redeeming in this bittersweet portrayal, as there is in so much else of what she has written. I have just ended the book and find myself unable to go to sleep. It makes me remember all the long-gone people of my life, the transitoriness of life itself. I found myself asking, why couldn't this couple get it together? There was no explanation offered by Tyler. The only positive thing I gained was an appreciation for my own dear husband and my own life, which is not plagued by the sad unhappiness of Michael and Pauline's. I just wonder what Tyler hoped to accomplish with this book. If she wished to unsettle her audience, well, she did so with at least one of her customers -- me. But I don't mean that as high praise for the book. I say, avoid this book unless you want a gray and sad reading experience.
Rating:
Summary: A disappointed Anne Tyler fan
Review: I love Anne Tyler for her quirky but totally believable characters. In this book the characters were quirky, but totally unlovable. In short, I really didn't care what happened to any of them. The book is like eavesdropping on one long argument between two people I don't care about. I had been waiting for her to write a new novel, and was really disappointed by this one. Try Saint Maybe instead.
Rating:
Summary: a wonderful engrossing read
Review: I read a lot --just finished the latest books by P.D. James, John LeCarre and Henning Mankell --I say that not to show off but to give you an idea of my reading interests and clearly haven't read an Ann Tyler book in years -- like Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant or Accidental Tourist may have been the last ones, so I go way back and only read this because I had bought it for my wife.... anyway, I found this book just simply wonderful..yes, there were times when I thought the dialogue was a bit stilted and not the way people talk --but I loved the way Tyler moved the story along ....and I usually don't like multi-generational books -- I felt as if I knew this family and I felt that I knew these people ..they were very real to me and what more cna you ask from a book? Anyway, I highly recommend it and will now go back and read some of her earlier works.....
Rating: 
Summary: Return to form
Review: Her most ambitious and successful book since "Saint Maybe," this novel marks a return to Tyler's interest in chronicling the lives of multiple generations of 20th-century Baltimore families (rather than just a few months or a year of the adult life of her main character in the present). I especially enjoyed how Tyler transcended her typical ending, in which a character is required to make a choice about whether to change his life in some way or not, and in which he usually makes the right choice, though this often entails bittersweet and regretful consequences. She moves beyond that dichotomy here, and shows what might happen when people make the wrong choice, and how they might eventually recover from their mistakes much later in life.
Rating:
Summary: Anatomy of a marriage
Review: Ms. Tyler has written yet another superb novel. Boy, is this a GOOD book!! There is no happy ending here, at least not in the fairy-tale sense of the word, but it is as realistic a portrait of marriage (along with the real problems often faced by families) as I have ever read. Ms. Tyler takes us on a journey through the marriage of Michael and Pauline Anton. Each chapter is a glimpse into a certain time period of their lives together. We discover how they met and the circumstances of their wartime marriage, how they adjust as a young married couple with small children and a live-in relative, later we see them deal with the thorny problems of the teenage years and so on and on. As a backdrop Ms. Tyler also deals with the doubts faced by both Michael and Pauline about whether they were ever really suited to one another in the first place. The answer is not a happy one but given the problems with their relationship over the years it is an honest and realistic one. I found it hard to put this book down until the very last page. Another memorable story by a very talented author!
Rating:
Summary: Anne Tyler's best yet!
Review: Anne Tyler sets herself two ambitious tasks for this novel: to cover a 60-year span in a relationship, and to shift the focus of the perspective from chapter to chapter. This plan, which might have become superficial, instead plays out to a fulfilling, deeply satisfying acquaintance with richly complex characters. Her writer's attitude is, as always, forgiving and kind.
Rating: 
Summary: horrible! absolutely horrible.
Review: the author offers no introduction whatsoever. We have no clue what happening at the start. The writing style is not even equivalent to a 5th grader. The way the characters talk seems fake because nobody talks in that loser like way. The story is very hard to follow, that is, if there is a story.
Rating: 
Summary: Dinner at the Heartsick Restaurant
Review: I believe I have read all of Anne Tyler's books, and fervently hope she cheers up soon. What I loved about Accidental Tourist and Homesick Restaurant is how she was able to depict a character's quirkiness and difficulty in making it through life with humor and understanding. In Accidental Tourist, one of my favorites, there was loss and loneliness and despair but it was offset by the genius of creating a main character who writes travel books for those who hate to leave home, and develops a sheet changing mechanism. In her last few books, I am awed by Ms. Tyler's writing ability but crushed by the apparent emotional decline of her world view, including the hopelessness of relationships and the inevitable failure of attempts to make things right. If she wasn't such an excellent writer, it wouldn't be so depressing! I could barely finish this book. I felt the core relationships of the novel, including Michael and Pauline, and Lindy and the whole family remained unresolved and unresolvable. So, this is a well written book, but I identified with Pauline and Michael, in that I found the characters around me difficult to like or understand, and the resigned despair of the ending overshadowed any pleasure or happiness that I may have experienced getting there.
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