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The Amateur Marriage
The Amateur Marriage
Author: Anne Tyler
From the inimitable Anne Tyler, 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 ...  more »
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ISBN-13: 9780345470614
ISBN-10: 0345470613
Publication Date: 10/2004
Pages: 336
Rating:
  • Currently 3.5/5 Stars.
 152

3.5 stars, based on 152 ratings
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Book Type: Paperback
Other Versions: Hardcover, Audio Cassette, Audio CD
Reviews: Member | Amazon | Write a Review

Top Member Book Reviews

reviewed The Amateur Marriage on + 92 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 3
Anne Tyler presents a warm and insightful view of a couple's life together, starting in the 1940's (World War II) through 1990. The author captures the nuances of everyday life, depicting the passing of the decades with precision. Bringing smiles of recognition, this book is disarming and deceptive, wise and observant. Recommended to all who are, have been or would like to be in an exclusive, committed relationship.
reviewed The Amateur Marriage on + 113 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 3
Couldn't finish this one. Could not hold my interest. Anne Tyler tries to hard with this one, in my opnion, and the writing seems forced with many cliches.
reviewed The Amateur Marriage on + 412 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 2
A terrific book that honestly explores the complexities of families and relationships.
bup avatar reviewed The Amateur Marriage on + 166 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 2
You want me to give you a reasoned analysis of the book and I just can't. Not with this one. I just finished it, I loved it, I'm devastated it's over, it's a completely emotional response, and I'm scared if I think about it too much I'll be embarrassed at how much I liked it. So, sorry. Not gonna do it. I love this book too much to examine whether it deserves my love and respect.
cay avatar reviewed The Amateur Marriage on + 63 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 2
Anne Tyler draws a vivid picture of the domestic ups and downs of a couple who meet and marry hastily in the 1940s, and follows them throughout their lives. Their interactions affect not only themselves, but their children and their children's children in dramatic, sometimes funny, sometimes tragic ways. A great read.
Read All 55 Book Reviews of "The Amateur Marriage"

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mrscasler avatar reviewed The Amateur Marriage on + 3 more book reviews
Awesome book! Makes you think! :)
reviewed The Amateur Marriage on
A book that draws you into the lives of the two main characters. Decent people, but in a marriage that should never have been. Another good story from Tyler.
reviewed The Amateur Marriage on + 4 more book reviews
I love Anne Tyler!
mywoodybird avatar reviewed The Amateur Marriage on + 28 more book reviews
very interesting and well written
reviewed The Amateur Marriage on + 40 more book reviews
Anne Tyler, prolific author of Breathing Lessons (made into a movie), writes this evocative novel.
Pauline and Michael seemed like the perfect couple--young, good-looking, made for each other. Set during WW II, it seems that while other couples grow more seasoned, these two remain amateurs. Still, they go on, "feuding, fussing and fighting." They have 3 children; one becomes a runaway in the turbulent 60's era. Pauline and Michael must rescue their little grandson from their "flower-child" daughter. "Tune in, turn on, and drop out," might have been the advice of Timothy O'Leary, but what about the damage that leaves behind?
In this embracing and perceptive novel, Anne Tyler captures the nuances of everyday life with such telling precision that every page brings nods of recognition.
reviewed The Amateur Marriage on + 75 more book reviews
Michael & Pauline seemed like the perfect couple - young, good looking, made for each other. The moment she walked into his mother's grocery store in the Polish quarter of Balitmore, he was smitten. And in the heat of WW II fervour, they marry in haste. In this achingly poingnant & unforgettable novel Tyler turns marriage inside out, to show us how attitudes trickle down the generations & marriage moulds its partners, for better or worse.
reviewed The Amateur Marriage on + 158 more book reviews
Some parts might be "R" rated!
fullybooked avatar reviewed The Amateur Marriage on + 61 more book reviews
Great writing. Typical of Tyler - always a bit depressing.
reviewed The Amateur Marriage on + 67 more book reviews
Very good book about a marriage over many years.
reviewed The Amateur Marriage on + 13 more book reviews
Another fast, good read from Tyler.
caffeinegirl avatar reviewed The Amateur Marriage on + 114 more book reviews
I usually love Anne Tyler's novels, but this one left me lukewarm. Although it is, like her other novels, thoughtful and well written, I didn't get much from it. The characters live, age, etc. Huh.

After reading it, I learned that Tyler had intended to keep writing this book for her entire life, weaving new parts of the family into it and extending it back in time. She saw it as a work without an ending. This helps explain the lack of structure. Also, I'm not sure that this kind of work qualifies as a novel? Either way, it was lovely but totally missable.
reviewed The Amateur Marriage on + 8 more book reviews
Thoroughly enjoyable. Characters are staying with me - I keep thinking about them.
harmony85 avatar reviewed The Amateur Marriage on + 982 more book reviews
Very good read, but IMO not as good as some of her others.
reviewed The Amateur Marriage on + 57 more book reviews
Anne Tyler's The Amateur Marriage is not so much a novel as a really long argument. Michael is a good boy from a Polish neighborhood in Baltimore; Pauline is a harum-scarum, bright-cheeked girl who blows into Michael's family's grocery store at the outset of World War II. She appears with a bloodied brow, supported by a gaggle of girlfriends. Michael patches her up, and neither of them are ever the same. Well, not the same as they were before, but pretty much the same as everyone else. After the war, they live over the shop with Michael's mother till they've saved enough to move to the suburbs. There they remain with their three children, until the onset of the sixties, when their eldest daughter runs away to San Francisco. Their marriage survives for a while, finally crumbling in the seventies.


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