Item Specifics - Audiobooks
Author: Anne Tyler Format: Cassette
Publisher: Random House Length: Unabridged
ISBN-10: 0739310410 Condition: Like New
ISBN-13: 9780739310410
7 cassettes, 11 hours
Synopsis
Pauline and Michael, married in postwar Baltimore, are very different--Pauline is impulsive, Michael is hidebound--but Pauline tends to get her way. And Michael, of course, resents this. Anne Tyler traces the events of their long marriage, and then the years after they are divorced, including portraits of their children as they grow up in the era of Vietnam and Haight-Ashbury and face their own problems. In her 16th novel, Tyler again does what she is best at: taking a bittersweet domestic situation and finding nuances in it that transcend the actual plot. But here she also ventures a bit further than usual into a territory that encompasses the frequent bitterness, recrimination, and disillusion that are an inescapable part of living an ordinary life. A New York Times Notable Book for 2004.
Details
Narrated by: Blair Brown
Edition Description: Unabridged
Size
Height: 6.3 in.
Width: 4.3 in.
Thickness: 2.5 in.
Weight: 10.4 oz.
Publisher's Note
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.
Industry reviews
"So smart, so sensitive, so readable and engaging."
Kirkus Reviews (11/15/2003)
"THE AMATEUR MARRIAGE is...Tyler's most ambitious work, ranging over 60 years of American experience....Tyler's grip on her characters and their pathos is...mischievous, but its focus is steady and unerring. The book also touches levels deeper than mischief...."
New York Times Book Review - William H. Pritchard (01/11/2004)
