Reviews for The Amateur Marriage

The average rating for The Amateur Marriage based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2008-08-23 00:00:00 Tamara Guentz Anne Tyler would laugh, I'm sure, if she read these different reactions to this book. For isn't this her point in so many of her novels? How different we all are and how easily we misunderstand each other? How one person can hate what another loves so passionately? How easy it is to miss the point, get the wrong end of the stick, fail to see what's under your very nose? The genius of Tyler is in her understated approach to the great themes of life. Behind the seemingly trivial details of the everyday lives of her ordinary characters, we are shown the pathos and suffering that inevitably faces us all. The passing of time. The wasted opportunities. The clarity of hindsight. Death. Loss. Regret. Disappointment. And behind all those, the persistent tug of the present and the pull of everyday concerns, and the solace that they ultimately provide. Tyler is one of the few novelists who can break your heart in a line. The closing paragraph of The Amateur Marriage had me in tears, and probably will again whenever I think of it.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-08-26 00:00:00 John Harriman "I am fascinated by how families work, endurance, how do we get through life?" - Anne Tyler, from an interview in The Guardian Two mismatched people - impulsive, gregarious, Wasp Pauline and methodical, quiet Polish Catholic Michael - get married, continually fight, move from one Baltimore neighbourhood to another, raise three children, experience loss and then… well, I don't want to spoil the plot, such as it is. You don't read Anne Tyler for big drama; you go to her for her vivid characters and the way she shows you people - to borrow from the quote above - "getting through life." The Amateur Marriage spans more than half a century, with several years elapsing between each chapter. (Each chapter, shaped beautifully like a short story, is centred around a significant event: a big anniversary dinner, a lie, a reunion.) As I got further into the book and I got more invested in the characters, I found myself wondering: "What's become of X?" "Why hasn't Y been mentioned in a while?" Beginning a chapter, I had to brace myself in case I learned someone had died in the interim. I was eager to know how Pauline and Michael's children turned out. Were they like their mom? Their dad? After a while it felt like I knew everybody, complete with their faults - a bad temper here, a bit of coldness there - and I wanted things to turn out well for them. There's a scene with two middle-aged people on a date that had me quietly cheering them on; it's contrasted later with a date scene that had me laughing at its awkwardness. I'm not sure how Tyler does this. She's great at getting us deep inside someone's point of view, but she's also a master at showing them doing things, even ordinary things. How a person drives a car says a lot about them. Following them walk up and down the aisles of a hardware store fixes them in your mind. Even the way someone sits at a table - Tyler's a cultural anthropologist in the way she depicts body language - tells you what their dialogue doesn't. Not that her dialogue is bad. Each one of her characters speaks a certain way. I adore Tyler's prose. There's nothing fashionable or faddish about it. No tricks. Just simple, old-fashioned, good writing. People complain that Tyler keeps writing the same novel. This is only the third book of hers I've read, and yes, all three have been set in Baltimore and concern families. But in each case, she's dealing with people I know, people I've been, people I will likely become. (Perhaps we read realistic fiction to see how other people live, to prepare us, if only subconsciously, for the future.) If Tyler writes the same novel all the time, then so did Jane Austen.