ONE OF THE BETTER BOOKS I HAVE EVER READ | The Amateur Marriage: A Novel

Lives In Time | The Amateur Marriage: A Novel | Anne Tyler

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	• The Amateur Marriage: A Novel Anne Tyler Ballantine Books, 2006 - 352 pages average customer review:based on 190 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Wasted Days

I cannot remember reading a more depressing novel (and I just finished The Kite Runner). The Amateur Marriage is very well written except for some style inconsistencies that bothered me but, because the story is so "small," it would be a difficult film treatment. What they should make is a movie of the reviewers' marriages who have described this story as "delightful." What must they be like?

The pace of the book is unique, in which years are cleverly rolled out in a way that make you wonder what happenbed to them... just like real life! Tyler jumps ahead decade by decade and clues the reader in using subtle current event hints that further illustrate how detached Michael and Pauline were from their own "real lives". I couldn't see either life as anything but a series of wasted, undocumented days that filled the unwritten chapters in between.

Throughout this novel you'll want to scream at the characters to "step back!", "simplify!", "communicate!" In the end, I was so glad for my own marriage and family that I demonstrated it, so, I guess you could say, this novel changed me in a good way.

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ONE OF THE BETTER BOOKS I HAVE EVER READ

I AM AMAZED AT ANNE TYLER'S ABILITY TO PRESENT EVERDAY LIFE WITH SUCH INSIGHT. THERE IS NO INTRICATE PLOT HERE-JUST THE UPS AND DOWNS OF AN ORDINARY MARRIAGE OVER A LIFE SPAN BETWEEN TWO VERY OPPOSITE MINDED PEOPLE.MOST MARRIAGES CAN THRIVE AND GROW IN SUCH AN ATMOSPHERE BUT OBVIOUSLY MANY CANNOT. THIS IS A BOOK THAT WILL STAY WITH ME FOR SOME TIME.

Lives In Time

For me, The Amateur Marriage represents the sixth time I have read one of Anne Tyler's novels. On the surface it's the story of Michael and Pauline. They meet by chance in 1941 in Anton's, the grocery store run by Michael's family. 1941, perhaps incidentally, is the year Anne Tyler was born.

There was a war to be fought, of course, a war that affected both of their lives. But there's a marriage, and a child, a daughter named Lindy. Others follow, a boy and another girl. For Michael and Pauline, life progresses, as does their marriage. But twists and turns take them to places they have never visited.

As with other novels by Anne Tyler, there is an obvious and consistent linearity about its time. A reviewer has to be careful with detail, because what happens to this novel's characters is a large part of how it happens, and thus an integral part of the book's rationale. To some extent, a listing of the plot, event by event, would render a reading unnecessary. But after a handful of Anne Tyler's books, I am now convinced there is much more going on in them than mere story-telling.

In the past I have found her characters shallow, rather self-obsessed, selfish, perhaps. They are people who have lives outside the family, but people who seem pre-occupied with the familiar and seem rarely to confront ideas or experience outside its apparently defining, but only sometimes
reassuring confines.

And perhaps that's the point. It is an American dream, a libertarian ideal under a microscope. It is analysed, picked apart, sometimes reconstructed. The characters are affected by political, social, economic and cultural change. Their lives are materially transformed by the same forces that lay waste and occasionally reinvent their home town, Baltimore. But they, themselves, are mere recipients of these effects, appearing to play no part in their instigation or, it seems, their analysis. They live their lives. They are pushed around by experience, jostled by life, reflect little, internalise everything, only occasionally recognising life's potential to reform. Time thus moves on. Inevitability looms unexpectedly.

It is not a criticism of Anne Tyler, her novel or its characters to proffer the opinion that everything seems to happen in an intellectual wasteland. People go to college, do law degrees, become involved with good causes, procreate, but moments of reflection seem to be confined to what breed of dog might not provoke allergy. Perhaps that's the point. Such things are the stuff of life. Time goes on.

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A Novel Menagerie's Review

This novel has been sitting on my shelf for a while, waiting for my attention and reading. While awaiting my Barnes & Noble order, which contains the books that I can't wait to sink my teeth into, I picked up this one off of my bookshelf and fulfilled my promise to myself to read it.

Now, I read Back When We Were Grown Ups by Anne Tyler some time ago (goodness, at least 2+ years ago), I wasn't blown away by that novel. I can recall picking this hardback from the airport bookstore when nothing else seemed appealing and thought I'd give the author another shot at grabbing my interest.

I was able to read this novel in just a short few days. Usually that pace is reserved for the novels that I can't wait to read.. but, this one grabbed my attention about 80 or so pages in. This story is a tale that takes you from the beginning of a marriage, at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor (1941), through to the near end of the main character's life. The Amateur Marriage contains moments that made me gasp aloud for Pauline, its heroine, and laugh aloud for the other main character, her husband, Michael. Pauline and Michael meet, by chance, in a small town near Baltimore. Pauline's fall from a street car, and subsequent minor head injury, lead her and her girlfriends into Michael's mother's small town store. Pauline was an energy that Michael simply did not resist and, after bandaging her wound, he followed her to watch the "parade" of local war enlistees.

Pauline and Michael share a very short-lived courtship, if you will, and Michael is off to serve his country. Pauline, a young woman with a limited ability to live a life of calm and who maintains a flair for the dramatic, writes Michael in "boot camp." As the days drag on, her youthful age and restless spirit change the tone of her letters to Michael from those of passion and wanting, to daily tales of the happenings within the sleepy small town. Michael grows resentful of the fact that he cannot be with Pauline and that she is socializing with other young men and women. It literally drives him crazy to the point that he lashes out at a fellow soldier in the bunks. This led to that soldier's retaliation of a rifle shot right through Michael's buttock!

As Michael returns home earlier than expected, Pauline is met with Michael's proposal. Quickly and unconventionally, they marry and begin their married life living with Michael's mother in a small apartment above the store. The cramped quarters prove to be a challenge for the spirited Pauline, but Michael is apparently able to sooth her into logic and reason... to be sensible and come and live the life with him that she had chosen. These two young'ns suffer the struggles of early wedhood and the reader watches Pauline's high spirit draw out Michael's true heart felt feelings towards her. Michael and Pauline have 3 children and eventually move to the suburbs, mom-in-law in tow. Michael opens a larger, "super market" type of store and grows away from the small town store.

You see Pauline's doubts surface about her marriage in her flirtation with a neighborhood divorcee... and her attempts at straying in the relationship being caught by Michael's acute awareness and thoroughness. It seems as though Pauline is tied to her role of mother, cook and caretaker. Although, none of those roles seems to fill her spirit. Her passionate fights and make-ups with Michael make for a reality in their marriage that is enjoyable to watch and read about.

The good thing about this novel is that it spans the lifetime of these characters, including their three children, Lindy, George and Karen. We learn that their oldest daughter, Lindy, runs away causing a pain in the family that causes irreparable harm. After years pass, Pauline is contacted by Lindy's "landlady" who informs her that Lindy has been committed, hospitalized of sorts, and that Lindy's son needs to be picked up or she'd have to contact social services to pick him up. Pauline and Michael jump on a plane to take their first flight, ever, to San Francisco to pick up Lindy and her son (I loved this part of the story). When they arrive in San Francisco, they learn that Lindy is really self-committed to a commune, of sorts, and has renamed herself to "Serenity." They arrive at the landlady's apartment to later be introduced to Pagan, Lindy's son. Michael's reaction to that name is priceless! Michael, Pauline and Pagan head back home, sans Lindy and begin a life raising this boy. I believe that Michael falls in love with Pauline all over again during this transition in their lives.

As Pauline and Michael celebrate their 30th Anniversary with their children, they are given a gift. The gift was a framed set of individual portraits of each of them, immediately before they met one another. The table conversation leads to explain that the picture shows them before they knew one another and what their lives were to become. Michael and Pauline reminisce, good and bad, over the span of their marriage. At bedtime, Pauline approaches bed in her slip in anticipation of love-making and Michael turns her down. They have a conversation about their marriage and Michael insults Pauline. A comment is made about Michael leaving and Pauline reacts with her typical, "then go ahead and go" childish reaction. But, this time, Michael leaves and never returns home. Pauline tries to resurrect their marriage, but it is finished for Michael and there is no return to home.

I must say that I did not like the end of this book. Michael remarries and it is more than obvious that he talks himself into believing he loves his second wife, Anna, just because she is the opposite of Pauline (i.e. total lack-luster, plain, boring, unemotional, complacent). But, I believe that he is still in love with Pauline in a way that Anna will never match. Pagan grows up well, despite the divorce. George starts a family of his own and becomes his mother's "repair man." Karen is plain strange and becomes an attorney for the underprivileged. By the time that Lindy returns, Pauline has died of a car accident. I hate this for two reasons: 1) the reader doesn't get to read about Pauline's death via from her viewpoint, we just hear about it after the fact; and 2) we don't get to see Michael's true reaction to her death. Seems like a lazy way to end Pauline's story, in my opinion. Eventually, the entire family has a meal together, sans the dead Pauline, and I am not moved by any of it. I think that Tyler tries to tie up the ending by having Michael walk to Pauline's house at the end of the story, but I totally don't get it at all! I read it 3 times, still don't get it. If you get it, email me!

In any event, the ending just ruined the book for me. I had thought that, in comparison to Back When We Were Grown Ups, this book was much better... until the end. Ugh. I guess that I am not Tyler's target audience because I want an ending with more meaning and depth. It's almost like Tyler just gave up on the story. On the "Out of Ten Scale," unfortunately, I would have to give this one a six. It would have gotten a 7-8, however the story just bombed for me at the end. I guess this author just isn't my cup of tea, after all.

On a final note, I don't think that, in a marriage, there is such thing as being anything but an amateur... there is no "being a pro" at it. Marriage is a dance, a discovery, a union, and a commitment to friendship. As people grow and change, the dance changes... the union changes. You either learn to remain a part of it or you walk away. There would be no way of "being a pro," I believe. The only way to be is just to live it and try to remain tethered to one another by the truth of pure love.

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A highly imperfect union

You can easily imagine that Tyler's first title was "Immature Marriage" but being a wordsmith, the more interesting title (and concept)emerged. (Amateur is a word from the Latin, which means "to love.") And, the umbrella question of the whole book is whether this is love... is it passion, is it filling in the blanks of one's personality and abilities, is it a societal acceptable married front, is it compatibilty, is it the ability to raise children by inches from infancy to a legal age? The couple portrayed, Micheal and Pauline, are both capable of intense passion (positive and negative)and they raised children but it seems to me that the story is about two people incapable of love or perhaps more accurately, a wrong-headed combining. Yet that idea never occurs to them and they assume that what they have together must be love. Tyler's writing is incredible; her use of language and her insights and comparables are just so impressive; the quirkiness in events and personalities is pure genius. I liked the layout of the book as it progressed through 60 years; each chapter you must get your bearings as to what part of life this is and what everyone is up to. It was a splendid mix of fine writing, storytelling events and psychology. Loved it.

Both characters, husband and wife, were competent in their own ways, but deeply incompetent as a parental unit, to run a family and ultimately the intensity of their relationship became an increasing negative. Interestingly, the husband, Micheal, took action only when he realized that only his wife Pauline, and himself were excitedly and delightedly recapping their dramatic fights as their only stories at their 30th wedding anniversary party; their adult children were neither delighted nor amused. It was such a censoring "rear view mirror" moment that crystallized the problem and precipitated Micheal's immediate departure from the marriage. One is left to wonder if he just wanted out of the blame and by being the one who initiated the divorce it was one of those "when you are being ridden out of town on a rail try to get out in front and make it look like a parade" moments.

Both individuals were portrayed as underdeveloped and flawed; sometimes a marriage fits to the extent that one person's weakeness is supported by the spouse's strengths. But in this case, each had similar weaknesses that created a serious problem for the development of the children; they both loved drama (although the husband, Micheal didn't think he did) said and did hurtful and antagonistic things to each other; they were both sexually inappropriate, including overt seductiveness in front of the children and "bedroom activities" with children aware of what was going on around their children; they fought viciously and behaved in vile passive-aggressive ways in front of the children. Pauline was so boundary-less that she would have had an affair in an instant-with three children and a husband in the home- and was stopped because of a random phone call.

Micheal wearied of the running gun battle after 30 years and suddenly divorced Pauline, and he married an opposite type, an unexciting, undramatic, unimaginative and self-contained plain woman, Anne, who is psychologically flat, extremely even. While at first the enormous relief was a source of attraction to Micheal, (drama/intensity fatigue) but the second marriage is flawed for him and never becomes as important to Micheal as the first marriage. Anne is the least likable person of the book, toadlike and unable to be talked into or convinced of anything or taking other's needs into consideration. Her boundaries were so far afield and hun-like defensed that she could not be healing or much of anything but a sterile companion, content with being blameless.

The interesting thing here is to look at the singular entity both marriages created. The first marriage was a vigorous two-headed creature either snarling or kissing, with sexual passion in its arterial system and bitter bile in its veneous. The second marriage was a half-hearted calcified creature with tap water circulating. Micheal becomes a sympathetic personality at the same moment you realize how avoidant and evasive of blame he is and how underdeveloped he is, understandable with his overburdened sorrowful childhood and overburdened frenetic life from young adulthood through most of his life. As a matter of fact, it becomes apparent that he is neither good nor bad, just confused and undeveloped.

The unrecognized surprise to Micheal was that he craved the intimacy and passion that an explosive unstable personality, female beauty and naked dependence created; life was deadly set before he met Pauline and somewhat like that after he left her, especially after her death. One is left with the impression that he left his colorless life with his widowed and depressed mother (who lost a son and a husband) to marry an unstable and vivacious woman and then when he got tired of that (describing his life with Pauline as "hell" after 30 years) or didn't want to be associated with being 1/2 of a destructive parenting team, divorced her and went once again to a life with the polar extreme of a colorless and unchallenging woman who saw him as "dessert," in other words not necessary to her life. In short, she didn't really appear to have the ability to give anything essential to the relationship to create a bonded couple happiness; she was kind of a quid pro quo gal.

Interestingly, Pauline and Micheal raised their grandson better than their children, probably because they divorced when the grandson was young. When they were married their dual drama was their priority; the children were damaged by witnessing the drama-both the fighting and sexualization of the household, wild instability, and emotional neglect. The oldest child was completly destroyed and ran away; the damage to the other two went underground and affected them deeply as well. This kind of nuanced storytelling feels honest. It rang true that neither Micheal nor Pauline considered that their loose behavior and lack of real love was the cause of their oldest child becoming an addict and a run-away or that the other children were also damaged albeit more subtly. When the oldest child returns decades later after Pauline died, her comments that her parents were ice and glass, similar agents, equally destructive to children growing up came as an absolute shock to Micheal. It was also shocking to him when his grandson named his daughter Pauline and when the family had good memories and stories about Pauline, but not him; no doubt this character, Micheal, was based on a real life personality who assumed that the more overt personality in the couple could be pointed to as the sole source of the family's problem, especially as he was the one who initiated the divorce. The shock to him was that he wasn't perceived as "the good guy" or a victim (of Pauline) by his children; he wasn't able to understand or escape the fact that to them he was one of two adults partnering a deeply destructive parental unit.

I thought it the passage of time was interesting - 60 years of Americana; the writerly details were incredible. This book was nuanced in detail of each era, which made for good reading. You can imagine how psychologically unsophisticated things were in an immigrant neighborhood in 1940s Baltimore. Micheal and Pauline were immature unbalanced abberations of a psychologically unsophisticated time; their highly imperfect union was fueled by something that was assumed to be amare (love); the evidence that it was did not contain the depth of love was chronicled by the damage to their offspring.

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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.

From the Hardcover edition.

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