
The Amateur Marriage
A Novel
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
3 months free
Buy for $16.16
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Blair Brown
-
By:
-
Anne Tyler
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.
©2004 Anne Tyler (P)2004 Random House, Inc., Random House Audio, a division of Random House, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...




















Critic reviews
"[Anne] Tyler's strength resides in her penetrating psychological portraits and delight in mundane details, and these gifts are evident....Her observations about how abruptly even the most boring life can go wrong, and about the fact that we are all amateurs in our first marriages, are poignant." (Booklist)
"Yes, Tyler intuitively understands the middle class' Norman Rockwell ideal, but she doesn't share it; rather, she has a masterful ability to make it bleed." (Publishers Weekly)
People who viewed this also viewed...


















Incredible observations
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The Summer Book!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
William Harrop
Bethesda, MD
A Moving Story
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Amateur Marriage
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Aside from the skipping around, giving no explanations or depths for significant events (the daughter running away, the wife dying), this book totally frustrated me!!
The narration was excellent. I just wish the story was as good.
Entertaining But Lacking
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Vintage Anne Tyler But Different
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Beautiful story
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
It turns out that truth can be stranger than fiction and a true story with all the same kinds of characters this book contains has already been written by the founder of Audible, Donald Katz, in the book "Home Fires: An Intimate Portrait of One Middle-Class Family in Postwar America". I would even bet that Anne Tyler was inspired by that book (not that there is anything wrong with that) and loosely based her story on that book, because all the characters within the "Amateur Marriage" have a counterpart within "Home Fires" and their story is more completely told while giving insights to the time period in greater detail.
Truth can enlighten more than fiction and in the case of "Home Fires" it entertains even more than fiction did.
If you like this one, you'll love "Home Fires"
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Real life has real lessons
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Engaging and thought provoking
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.