If Britney Spears were an avid reader, she might pick up a copy
of Anne Tyler’s “The Amateur Marriage” and think
twice about hasty Las Vegas nuptials. While a well-read Spears
could be a great thing, fortunately, she probably wouldn’t
waste her time on this clunky novel.
From Tyler, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for
“Breathing Lessons,” comes “The Amateur
Marriage,” a novel about the trials of marriage that is
simply a trial to read. At times Tyler’s lyrical style of
writing shines, pulling readers through three generations of love
and frustration, but for the most part the dry plot drags on for
six decades and seems to plateau after the couple’s heedless
wedding.
Michael Anton and Pauline Barker ““ young, beautiful and
tumbling into love ““ meet in the passionate heat of World War
II and rashly marry soon after a brief courtship. Rather than
detailing the beginning of their marriage, Tyler chooses to skip
forward to two years after their wedding and tell the story of an
already exhausted relationship that goes from bad to worse.
Throughout the entire novel, the reader never learns what the early
stages of their marriage were like; were they ever happy to be
married and what caused their relationship to sour? Without this
key information, it’s difficult to care about the characters
enough to suffer with them through their stale marriage.
The idea for the book is fairly interesting: track a couple, in
a sort of “Forrest Gump”-esque approach, through modern
history and watch them react to changing times. Tyler’s
attempts at this can be cute, such as when a nervous Michael takes
his first plane ride in the ’60s, and later, as an old man,
gets frustrated when he can’t find a parking spot amid a sea
of SUVs. Unfortunately, these sentimental glimpses are few and far
between, as most of the novel consists of petty arguments and their
aftermath in the Anton house.
Until the middle of the novel, none of the characters seem to
particularly like or truly know each other at all. In the last 10
pages, a few anecdotal references to happier times add an endearing
dimension to the characters, but 293 pages is a lot to read through
before you get there.
Throughout the book, it feels like Tyler is trying to decide
what kind of a novel she wants to write. At times, the book seems
like a simple reflection on what goes wrong in a relationship, but
then randomly turns into a story that’s downright tragic.
When his teenage daughter runs away, Michael is so removed from
reality he actually believes she might be at a sleepover. With
characters like this, Tyler’s story becomes a profile on a
distant, cartoonish family that must react to crisis but never
grows up or grows together as a result.
Perhaps this is Tyler’s point: to tell a story about
amateur lovers who seem destined to be extraordinary, but their
incompatibility leads to a life that was terribly ordinary. As
Tyler may believe this to be the plight of many relationships,
married couples might rejoice at her insight to marriage. For
everyone else, it is difficult to grow attached to a novel in which
the characters are barely attached to each other.
-Fay Gordon