“The Amateur Marriage”
by Anne Tyler
Published: January 2004
ISBN: 0670044911

(Updated: January 8, 2005.)

I have read all of Anne Tyler’s books. I have enjoyed most of them and some I have found quite brilliant (like The Accidental Tourist).

From the Publisher…

Michael and 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 neighbourhood of Baltimore, he was smitten. And in the heat of World War II fervor, they were hastily wed. But they never should have married.

The reason I like Anne Tyler’s books is that she describes apparently ordinary people. By that I mean the themes, questions, day-to-day lives she describes could be lived by many of us in the Western world. This book is no different and concentrates on a couple and the family they end up founding.

For me the book picked up steam as I went through it but, different from some of her other books, I felt as though I were watching these characters from the outside. Through a window somehow. I don’t feel as though I know them. I feel as though I know about them. And as is often the case in that context, there is no emotional investment that happens. Interest stays at more of a curiosity level.

Regardless, there are some interesting observations, some truths that must be somewhat universal in these pages. And although I was somewhat impatient with the characters at the beginning, by the end I was “wishing them well” and/but was glad that my life wasn’t theirs.

My “couldn’t wait to get back to factor” moved from a 2 to a 4 out of 5 hearts by the end of the book so I’ll give it an overall 3.