The Amateur Marriage

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.