Wow, a Douglas Coupland followed by an Anne Tyler. I really am pushing my reading to the limits. And The Amateur Marriage feels like a real trudge of an Anne Tyler book, too. It's about families and how they weigh each other down and generate baggage and mess each other up, and all the things that many of her books are about, but somehow this one just seems, well, weighed down and full of baggade and messed up in a way that her earlier books are not.
I suppose it's partly the fact that she strips a lot of the romance out of this book. In a way, it's more real. These people aren't really quirky. They're not lovable and odd with cute careers that no-one has in real life. They don't have funny little mannerisms, but annoying little habits. It's as though, by making her book incredibly real, she has made it incredibly boring. I don't care about these people, and I'm pretty nosey.
1 comment:
In shock Trish and Queenie actually read the same book in the same year news, I read The Amateur Marriage a couple of weeks ago, I got it in a second hand shop. And I felt the same about it.
Although I was annoyed that he left her in the end, as I didn't think she deserved that.
The female character reminded me so much of my mother it was scary.
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