The Amateur Marriage by Anne Tyler

The Amateur Marriage by Anne Tyler

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * From the beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning author--a rich and compelling novel about a mismatched marriage and its consequences, spanning three generations

They seemed like the perfect couple--young, good-looking, made for each other. The moment Pauline, a stranger to the Polish Eastern Avenue neighborhood of Baltimore (though she lived only twenty minutes away), walked into his mother's grocery store, Michael was smitten. And in the heat of World War II fervor, they are propelled into a hasty wedding. But they never should have married.

Pauline, impulsive, impractical, tumbles hit-or-miss through life; Michael, plodding, cautious, judgmental, proceeds deliberately. While other young marrieds, equally ignorant at the start, seemed to grow more seasoned, Pauline and Michael remain amateurs. In time their foolish quarrels take their toll. Even when they find themselves, almost thirty years later, loving, instant parents to a little grandson named Pagan, whom they rescue from Haight-Ashbury, they still cannot bridge their deep-rooted differences. Flighty Pauline clings to the notion that the rifts can always be patched. To the unyielding Michael, they become unbearable.

From the sound of the cash register in the old grocery to the counterculture jargon of the sixties, from the miniskirts to the multilayered apparel of later years, Anne Tyler captures the evocative nuances of everyday life during these decades with such telling precision that every page brings smiles of recognition. Throughout, as each of the competing voices bears witness, we are drawn ever more fully into the complex entanglements of family life in this wise, embracing, and deeply perceptive novel.

Anne Tyler grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina, after being born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1941. Her eleventh novel, Breathing Lessons, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988, and this is her twentieth. She is an American Academy of Arts and Letters member. She resides in the city of Baltimore, Maryland.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780345470614
ISBN 10	0345470613
Title	The Amateur Marriage
Author	Anne Tyler
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Random House USA Inc
Year published	2004-10-26
Number of pages	320
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.