The Amateur Marriage

Michael and Pauline seem like the perfect couple until their 17-year-old daughter disappears and they are forced to rescue her little boy named Pagan from drug-infested San Francisco. Tyler captures the nuances of everyday life through the decades of this mismatched marriage and its consequences. 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 thiswise embracing and deeply perceptive novel.