An Amateur Marriage / by Anne Tyler

Despite a naturally shy demeanor and general disinterest towards media & publicity attention, American author Anne Tyler is still recognized as one of the country's most prolific writers, having won a Pulitzer for her novel Breathing Lessons (1989) and a Critics Circle Award for The Accidental Tourist (1985). An Amateur Marriage (2004) is a lighthearted but telling account of a marriage which is, frankly, just as the title describes it.

It's post-Pearl Harbor 1941 and patriotism runs high throughout the country, perhaps nowhere more fervent than in the Baltimore where eager young men march through the streets on their way to war. Yet 18-year-old Michael Anton feels reluctant to enlist, not wanting to leave his recently widowed mother alone to run their neighborhood grocery, especially for a dangerous and perhaps fatal stint as a soldier. These inhibitions are overruled the moment he sets his sights on Pauline Barclay for whom Michael feels that any life lived out of her favor would be hopelessly unworthy. Consequently, the younger and girlishly romantic Pauline can't help her feelings for Michael and a hasty engagement is swiftly set in motion just as Michael heads off to boot camp.

Following Michael's medical discharge the young but amorous pair are married and promptly settle into domestic life in the apartment above the family store. But Pauline's more cosmopolitan ambitions and restless temperament simply won't allow such an arrangement, especially once the couple's three children--Lindy, George and Karen--start arriving. Within years following their marriage and despite Michael's more conservative viewpoint, the family relocates to a home in the suburbs where even upon arrival, Pauline's well-vocalized yearning for more desirous prospects becomes a constant barrage in Michael's ear. Arguments and frequent bickering are commonplace in the Anton household, the couple's routine fallouts over anything and everything overriding their few happy moments. While fond and loving of their three kids the pair are, at best, less than adequate parents, consistently erring on matters of discipline and ultimately unable to prevent their eldest, Lindy, from running away at 17. Neither can Michael or Pauline prevent their marriage from its inevitable collapse as, after 25 years of their steadily decaying relationship, things dissolve in divorce.

Tyler is a sentimentalist but her characterization of two halves of a doomed union rings of genuine authenticity. Michael and Pauline aren't bad, they're just ordinary flawed individuals trying and failing to manifest any joy or prosperity in matrimony. The author's subtly clever about how she goes about it all. The mood is very "light" with divisiveness arising from mild personal dissatisfactions rather than ill-wrought grudges or resentment--more the Ropers from "Three's Company" than Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Yet this doesn't dissuade from any realism or validity. Michael and Pauline are very much your archetypal 'normal' people living in mid-century middle America where any biased distinction of class, race, generation or upbringing can't be chalked up as a reason for the marriage's failure. The Antons fall short because they very evidently lack the tools to make it work. (FIC TYLER)