The Amateur Marriage

Painfully funny and heartachingly true, Anne Tyler draws our eyes to an ill-matched couple, and the slow, tragicomic disintegration of their marriage.

When Pauline Barclay whirls into Michael Anton's grocery store in 1941, he is convinced he's in love. In due course they marry, and so begins their misadventure of wedded misery. Over the course of sixty years, Michael and Pauline endure their marriage (and each other) through anniversaries, affairs, and children, as the union of two people slowly devolves into a parting of ways. Injecting a touch of mischief with a dash of wisdom, Anne Tyler plays out an American marriage and its sometimes unavoidable end.