Book: The amateur marriage
Mar. 21st, 2012 11:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livAuthor: Anne Tyler
Details: (c) 2004 Anne Tyler; Pub Chatto & Windus 2004; ISBN 0-7011-7734-9
Verdict: The amateur marriage is just the kind of character piece I like.
Reasons for reading it: I've liked everything I've read by Tyler so far. Her books tend to be similar to each other, but they are all good and sometimes they're just the kind of thing I'm in the mood for.
How it came into my hands: The library, which is an excellent source of this kind of intensely mimetic book.
The amateur marriage is pretty much a perfect exemplar of the sort of book it is. It just recounts some people's lives, with intensely observed characterization and events which affect the characters profoundly but have almost no impact on the world at large. If you hate this genre, tAM isn't going to be the book to convince you otherwise, but I happen to like it (and had just read a very infodumpy, Eganesque hard SF novel, so tAM was a nice chaser), and tAM does this particular set of things very well.
One aspect that worked really well was the use of multiple viewpoints, which was a great way to convey the situation of two basically decent but flawed people who were trying to have a relationship despite being mismatched. You could very well believe how they ended up married, and how they stayed married for 30 years in spite of the problems, and how they eventually just couldn't handle it any more and got divorced but were still very much a part of eachother's lives. With a lot of novels about troubled relationships, the narrative has a clear favourite, but tAM managed to avoid that; Michael isn't judged for being boring and staid and Pauline isn't judged for being impetuous and self-centred. It's easy to empathize with the couple both in their strong romantic connection and in their irritation with eachother's personalities.
The storyline is about the couple's teenage daughter disappearing, getting into bad company, turning up with a kid years later and then disappearing again. In some ways this dramatic stuff is downplayed in favour of just talking about the effects on the protags' relationship, which I enjoyed because I'm more interested in character exploration than soap opera style drama. I found it a very interesting authorial choice that although we get a little bit of POV for the two siblings, we don't ever get inside Lindy's head, we only see her through the eyes of her parents and family. There's also no Pagan POV, so there are only hints of how he feels about spending his first three years in a very unstable situation, then suddenly being snatched away from his mother and raised by his grandparents.
The other thing that makes tAM is the culture and historical setting. By following the Antons over a 60 year span, you get little glimpses of what went on in suburban America from WW2 until the present day. Everything from pop culture to global politics to changes in race relations, but seen through the eyes of ordinary people going about their lives. Also Michael comes from a Polish-American background, and it was definitely interesting to see a glimpse of an immigrant community I don't know much about. tAM is hardly unique in presenting this history, but I definitely found it added something to the book.
Details: (c) 2004 Anne Tyler; Pub Chatto & Windus 2004; ISBN 0-7011-7734-9
Verdict: The amateur marriage is just the kind of character piece I like.
Reasons for reading it: I've liked everything I've read by Tyler so far. Her books tend to be similar to each other, but they are all good and sometimes they're just the kind of thing I'm in the mood for.
How it came into my hands: The library, which is an excellent source of this kind of intensely mimetic book.
The amateur marriage is pretty much a perfect exemplar of the sort of book it is. It just recounts some people's lives, with intensely observed characterization and events which affect the characters profoundly but have almost no impact on the world at large. If you hate this genre, tAM isn't going to be the book to convince you otherwise, but I happen to like it (and had just read a very infodumpy, Eganesque hard SF novel, so tAM was a nice chaser), and tAM does this particular set of things very well.
One aspect that worked really well was the use of multiple viewpoints, which was a great way to convey the situation of two basically decent but flawed people who were trying to have a relationship despite being mismatched. You could very well believe how they ended up married, and how they stayed married for 30 years in spite of the problems, and how they eventually just couldn't handle it any more and got divorced but were still very much a part of eachother's lives. With a lot of novels about troubled relationships, the narrative has a clear favourite, but tAM managed to avoid that; Michael isn't judged for being boring and staid and Pauline isn't judged for being impetuous and self-centred. It's easy to empathize with the couple both in their strong romantic connection and in their irritation with eachother's personalities.
The storyline is about the couple's teenage daughter disappearing, getting into bad company, turning up with a kid years later and then disappearing again. In some ways this dramatic stuff is downplayed in favour of just talking about the effects on the protags' relationship, which I enjoyed because I'm more interested in character exploration than soap opera style drama. I found it a very interesting authorial choice that although we get a little bit of POV for the two siblings, we don't ever get inside Lindy's head, we only see her through the eyes of her parents and family. There's also no Pagan POV, so there are only hints of how he feels about spending his first three years in a very unstable situation, then suddenly being snatched away from his mother and raised by his grandparents.
The other thing that makes tAM is the culture and historical setting. By following the Antons over a 60 year span, you get little glimpses of what went on in suburban America from WW2 until the present day. Everything from pop culture to global politics to changes in race relations, but seen through the eyes of ordinary people going about their lives. Also Michael comes from a Polish-American background, and it was definitely interesting to see a glimpse of an immigrant community I don't know much about. tAM is hardly unique in presenting this history, but I definitely found it added something to the book.
