The Amateur Marriage: A Novel

• Anne Tyler has taken the edgy, imperfect, exasperating moments of marriage and woven a tapestry of life and its changes in the course of a fifty-year relationship.

Unexpected car trouble leaves the doctor and the former party boy stranded during their cross-country trip, bringing them closer togetherâ€"â€"in every way possible.

Rachel and Scott were never friends in college; her scholarly pursuits never fit with his party-boy attitude. She was the serious student, spending whatever time she had studying to become a doctor. Scott was just the opposite: a sexy frat boy more interested in booze and girls than books.

When they share a road trip after graduation, the only question is how they will tolerate each other for two days in close quarters. Everything changes when Scott's car breaks down in a small town, leaving them with only one opportunity to raise the money they n! eed. Now Rachel must come out of her scholarly shell and embrace the exhibitionist withinâ€"and maybe show Scott there's more to her than her brain.
Unexpected car trouble leaves the doctor and the former party boy stranded during their cross-country trip, bringing them closer togetherâ€"â€"in every way possible.

Rachel and Scott were never friends in college; her scholarly pursuits never fit with his party-boy attitude. She was the serious student, spending whatever time she had studying to become a doctor. Scott was just the opposite: a sexy frat boy more interested in booze and girls than books.

When they share a road trip after graduation, the only question is how they will tolerate each other for two days in close quarters. Everything changes when Scott's car breaks down in a small town, leaving them with only one opportunity to raise the money they need. Now Rachel must come out of her scholarly shell and embrace the exhibitionist withinâ€"and maybe! show Scott there's more to her than her brain.
This anthol! ogy is a thorough introduction to classic literature for those who have not yet experienced these literary masterworks. For those who have known and loved these works in the past, this is an invitation to reunite with old friends in a fresh new format. From Shakespeare’s finesse to Oscar Wilde’s wit, this unique collection brings together works as diverse and influential as The Pilgrim’s Progress and Othello. As an anthology that invites readers to immerse themselves in the masterpieces of the literary giants, it is must-have addition to any library.Ten short stories of various genres, including crime, suspense, mystery, humor, and fantasy. From the author of the Greg Tenorly Suspense Series: Bicycle Shop Murder, Hideaway Hospital Murders, Illusion of Luck, and Fly the Rain, as well as the whodunit cozy mystery, Sweet Ginger Poison, and the Rebecca Ranghorn Mystery, Naked Frame.

Titles:

Amateur Investigator
A newbie private investigator learns that ! he just might not be cut out for this line of work. (1,491 words)

Face to Face
Online chemistry is one thing. Face to face can be something entirely different. (1,200 words)

Bottled Up
A timid high school boy inadvertently uncorks his bottled up rage when he lets a genie out of the bottle. (1,254 words)

Resolution
A New Year’s resolution is not always a good thing. (1,180 words)

Magic Tea
A young businessman will do anything to satisfy his desperate need for sleep. (1,325 words)

Dead to the World
A woman’s sleeping pill allows her cheating husband to go on nightly adventures. (811 words)

Party Clown
A disgruntled business partner plans to get his revenge at a surprise birthday party. (1,144 words)

Memory Bank
A man uses a new high-tech process to remove his bad memories and store them in a Memory Bank. (1,227 words)

DonorLotto
Combining blood d! onation and gambling. What could possibly go wrong? (1,321 wor! ds)

Santa Closet
A young boy thinks his Christmas is ruined when his family moves into a house without a chimney. (975 words)Ten short stories of various genres, including crime, suspense, mystery, humor, and fantasy. From the author of the Greg Tenorly Suspense Series: Bicycle Shop Murder, Hideaway Hospital Murders, Illusion of Luck, and Fly the Rain, as well as the whodunit cozy mystery, Sweet Ginger Poison, and the Rebecca Ranghorn Mystery, Naked Frame.

Titles:

Amateur Investigator
A newbie private investigator learns that he just might not be cut out for this line of work. (1,491 words)

Face to Face
Online chemistry is one thing. Face to face can be something entirely different. (1,200 words)

Bottled Up
A timid high school boy inadvertently uncorks his bottled up rage when he lets a genie out of the bottle. (1,254 words)

Resolution
A New Year’s resolution is not always a good thing. (1,180 words)

Magic TeaA young businessman will do anything to satisfy his desperate need for sleep. (1,325 words)

Dead to the World
A woman’s sleeping pill allows her cheating husband to go on nightly adventures. (811 words)

Party Clown
A disgruntled business partner plans to get his revenge at a surprise birthday party. (1,144 words)

Memory Bank
A man uses a new high-tech process to remove his bad memories and store them in a Memory Bank. (1,227 words)

DonorLotto
Combining blood donation and gambling. What could possibly go wrong? (1,321 words)

Santa Closet
A young boy thinks his Christmas is ruined when his family moves into a house without a chimney. (975 words)From the inimitable Anne Tyler, a rich and compelling novel about a mismatched marriageâ€"and its consequences, spanning three generations.

They seemed like the perfect coupleâ€"young, good-looking, made for each other. The moment Pauline, a stranger to the Polish Eastern Ave! nue neighborhood of Baltimore (though she lived only twenty mi! nutes aw ay), walked into his mother’s grocery store, Michael was smitten. And in the heat of World War II fervor, they are propelled into a hasty wedding. But they never should have married.

Pauline, impulsive, impractical, tumbles hit-or-miss through life; Michael, plodding, cautious, judgmental, proceeds deliberately. While other young marrieds, equally ignorant at the start, seemed to grow more seasoned, Pauline and Michael remain amateurs. In time their foolish quarrels take their toll. Even when they find themselves, almost thirty years later, loving, instant parents to a little grandson named Pagan, whom they rescue from Haight-Ashbury, they still cannot bridge their deep-rooted differences. Flighty Pauline clings to the notion that the rifts can always be patched. To the unyielding Michael, they become unbearable.

From the sound of the cash register in the old grocery to the counterculture jargon of the sixties, from the miniskirts to the multilayered appare! l of later years, Anne Tyler captures the evocative nuances of everyday life during these decades with such telling precision that every page brings smiles of recognition. Throughout, as each of the competing voices bears witness, we are drawn ever more fully into the complex entanglements of family life in this wise, embracing, and deeply perceptive novel.


From the Hardcover edition.Anne Tyler's The Amateur Marriage is not so much a novel as a really long argument. Michael is a good boy from a Polish neighborhood in Baltimore; Pauline is a harum-scarum, bright-cheeked girl who blows into Michael's family's grocery store at the outset of World War II. She appears with a bloodied brow, supported by a gaggle of girlfriends. Michael patches her up, and neither of them are ever the same. Well, not the same as they were before, but pretty much the same as everyone else. After the war, they live over the shop with Michael's mother till they've sav! ed enough to move to the suburbs. There they remain with thei! r three children, until the onset of the sixties, when their eldest daughter runs away to San Francisco. Their marriage survives for a while, finally crumbling in the seventies. If this all sounds a tad generic, Tyler's case isn't helped by the characteristics she's given the two spouses. Him: repressed, censorious, quiet. Her: voluble, emotional, romantic. Mars, meet Venus. What marks this couple, though, and what makes them come alive, is their bitter, unproductive, tooth-and-nail fighting. Tyler is exploring the way that ordinary-seeming, prosperous people can survive in emotional poverty for years on end. She gets just right the tricks Michael and Pauline play on themselves in order to stay together: "How many times," Pauline asks herself, "when she was weary of dealing with Michael, had she forced herself to recall the way he'd looked that first day? The slant of his fine cheekbones, the firming of his lips as he pressed the adhesive tape in place on her forehead.! " Only in antogonism do Michael and Pauline find a way to express themselves. --Claire Dederer