Book-It '10! Book #18
The Fifty Books Challenge, year two! This was a library request.
Title: The Amateur Marriage: A Novel by Anne Tyler
Details: Copyright 2004, Random House
Synopsis (By Way of Front Flap): "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 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."
Why I Wanted to Read It: An unexpected turn in the continuing search for modern (or non-Arthurian) Pagan fiction; the name of a character (as described in the flap) happens to be Pagan. Still, it looked like an interesting novel.
How I Liked It: The book sweeps from the early '40s to the early '00s in a little over three hundred pages. Certainly more years have gotten by well in less, but the book still has a rushed feel. A chapter jump, it's several years later. We never really get to know the family other than a very thin sketch of the central couple reinforced by statements from other characters ("The fact is, you'[re exactly like your father. you think standoffishness is a virtue." pg 285). Unlike the deft hand of Wally Lamb or Jeffrey Eugenides who can take us through generations and offer characters that are more than just stereotypes, Tyler totes the stock characters (temperamental, emotional wife; standoffish, placid husband; shrill, bossy, overbearing daughter-in-law) as though to save time writing (we already are familiar with this type, so why bother getting to know him or her?).
The author's characterization aside, the plot finds a bit more footing about halfway through the book where it strikes a strong thread (that it unfortunately just as quickly loses) of the cost of chance in the chance meeting that brings the two central characters together. Given that the book seems to be so eager in charging to a point (sweeping through a decade here and there), you almost are relieved that this is apparently where Tyler is going. But it's not. And the book peters out to a predictably unsatisfactory finish.
The book isn't completely without quality, though. As noted in the front cover, Tyler does have a way with period detailing that makes for a vivid setting. Worn 'forties row homes,'fifties modern furniture, a smoky Haight-Ashbury burn-out, a beatnik girl's sparse bedroom: all these places are described richly which makes it all the more frustrating that Tyler is so quick to whisk you out of the setting and onto the next.
Notable: Though the setting doesn't factor terribly into the plot (although the publishing information lists "Baltimore, (Md.)-fiction" as a the primary subject), the book is indeed set in Baltimore. Some of the nuances feel a bit forced. While it could be attributed to the fact Tyler is a Baltimore transplant (the author's biography describes her as being born in Minneapolis and growing up in Raliegh, North Carolina before settling in Baltimore), surely the fact that there are countless New York City transplants that write more authentically should be some example. Waitresses are particularly quick with a "hon", mention is made of several genuine Baltimore streets and stops, the local women seem to have a hundred different ways with crab, various local sports teams are cheered, and, lest we forget, this marriage was spawned in a row home. Still, there is a decent depiction of the urban sprawl that took hold of Baltimore's suburbs and the gentrification of its inner city.
Title: The Amateur Marriage: A Novel by Anne Tyler
Details: Copyright 2004, Random House
Synopsis (By Way of Front Flap): "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 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."
Why I Wanted to Read It: An unexpected turn in the continuing search for modern (or non-Arthurian) Pagan fiction; the name of a character (as described in the flap) happens to be Pagan. Still, it looked like an interesting novel.
How I Liked It: The book sweeps from the early '40s to the early '00s in a little over three hundred pages. Certainly more years have gotten by well in less, but the book still has a rushed feel. A chapter jump, it's several years later. We never really get to know the family other than a very thin sketch of the central couple reinforced by statements from other characters ("The fact is, you'[re exactly like your father. you think standoffishness is a virtue." pg 285). Unlike the deft hand of Wally Lamb or Jeffrey Eugenides who can take us through generations and offer characters that are more than just stereotypes, Tyler totes the stock characters (temperamental, emotional wife; standoffish, placid husband; shrill, bossy, overbearing daughter-in-law) as though to save time writing (we already are familiar with this type, so why bother getting to know him or her?).
The author's characterization aside, the plot finds a bit more footing about halfway through the book where it strikes a strong thread (that it unfortunately just as quickly loses) of the cost of chance in the chance meeting that brings the two central characters together. Given that the book seems to be so eager in charging to a point (sweeping through a decade here and there), you almost are relieved that this is apparently where Tyler is going. But it's not. And the book peters out to a predictably unsatisfactory finish.
The book isn't completely without quality, though. As noted in the front cover, Tyler does have a way with period detailing that makes for a vivid setting. Worn 'forties row homes,'fifties modern furniture, a smoky Haight-Ashbury burn-out, a beatnik girl's sparse bedroom: all these places are described richly which makes it all the more frustrating that Tyler is so quick to whisk you out of the setting and onto the next.
Notable: Though the setting doesn't factor terribly into the plot (although the publishing information lists "Baltimore, (Md.)-fiction" as a the primary subject), the book is indeed set in Baltimore. Some of the nuances feel a bit forced. While it could be attributed to the fact Tyler is a Baltimore transplant (the author's biography describes her as being born in Minneapolis and growing up in Raliegh, North Carolina before settling in Baltimore), surely the fact that there are countless New York City transplants that write more authentically should be some example. Waitresses are particularly quick with a "hon", mention is made of several genuine Baltimore streets and stops, the local women seem to have a hundred different ways with crab, various local sports teams are cheered, and, lest we forget, this marriage was spawned in a row home. Still, there is a decent depiction of the urban sprawl that took hold of Baltimore's suburbs and the gentrification of its inner city.