Book-blogging: "The Amateur Marriage"
Dec. 10th, 2007 06:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
julietAs per here, one of my 101 things is to read & blog 10 recommended books. I've just finished the first one, "The Amateur Marriage" by Anne Tyler, as recommended by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mrs_leroy_brown.
It covers a couple's relationship, from meeting, to (fairly clearly ill-fated from the start) marriage, to kids, divorce, grandkids; and all the small things in between. Anne Tyler really is good at the small observations; you can see how and why things happen as they do, even if you can also see both how and why they might have happened otherwise.
The telling of things from different angles shows how the people involved construct their own views of themselves and each other, and how those different angles put a different meaning on their failure to meet (to be able to meet?) each other on any middle ground. Their post-divorce relationships also show up the extent to which they've constructed themselves around the other and that relationship - reacting against it but not considering what they did get out of it (and people do get things out of any relationship, however dysfunctional - in some cases because of the dysfunction).
I found it saddening, because of the lack of awareness shown - the ways in which people react to and against their surroundings without acknowledging that they're doing it (or sometimes acknowledging it but not thinking further about what that means), the ways in which they, deliberately or otherwise, rewrite their past, the ways in which they fail to meet, the ways in which they deceive. There's an implication of inevitability about it all.
But it's also fascinating, and sufficiently well-observed that it does construct things believably. (Which is of course also depressing.) I'd second Bec's recommendation that it's worth reading.
mrs_leroy_brown.It covers a couple's relationship, from meeting, to (fairly clearly ill-fated from the start) marriage, to kids, divorce, grandkids; and all the small things in between. Anne Tyler really is good at the small observations; you can see how and why things happen as they do, even if you can also see both how and why they might have happened otherwise.
The telling of things from different angles shows how the people involved construct their own views of themselves and each other, and how those different angles put a different meaning on their failure to meet (to be able to meet?) each other on any middle ground. Their post-divorce relationships also show up the extent to which they've constructed themselves around the other and that relationship - reacting against it but not considering what they did get out of it (and people do get things out of any relationship, however dysfunctional - in some cases because of the dysfunction).
I found it saddening, because of the lack of awareness shown - the ways in which people react to and against their surroundings without acknowledging that they're doing it (or sometimes acknowledging it but not thinking further about what that means), the ways in which they, deliberately or otherwise, rewrite their past, the ways in which they fail to meet, the ways in which they deceive. There's an implication of inevitability about it all.
But it's also fascinating, and sufficiently well-observed that it does construct things believably. (Which is of course also depressing.) I'd second Bec's recommendation that it's worth reading.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-12-11 10:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-11 10:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-11 10:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-11 10:57 am (UTC)For me, it was particularly heartwrenching to know that Pauline and Micheal did actually love each other but they were just fundamentally unsuited to one another and there's no way they could have made it work.
Tyler's weaving Lindy and Pagan's story in the marriage story was also really well done.
...the ways in which people react to and against their surroundings without acknowledging that they're doing it (or sometimes acknowledging it but not thinking further about what that means), the ways in which they, deliberately or otherwise, rewrite their past, the ways in which they fail to meet, the ways in which they deceive.
Spot on!
no subject
Date: 2007-12-11 11:10 am (UTC)Um. Actually, that's not quite what I mean. I think I'm trying to get at the fact that "love" is all very well, but it isn't by any means enough to warrant keeping two people together. And we have a problem whereby society prioritises that view of "love" over everything else. Love conquers all, etc etc. No, it really doesn't; and trying to make it so is the cause of a great many interpersonal ills.
I did like the Lindy/Pagan thing, as well, yes.
My lack of explanation!
Date: 2007-12-11 11:40 am (UTC)I liked how Lindy pronounced Kerouc and Camus!
Re: My lack of explanation!
Date: 2007-12-11 01:28 pm (UTC)Thank you for the recommendation!