The Amateur Marriage

<p><b>Anne Tyler</b> was born in Minneapolis Minnesota in 1941 and grew up in Raleigh North Carolina. Her bestselling novels include <i>Breathing Lessons</i> <i>The Accidental Tourist</i> <i>Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant</i> <i>Ladder of Years</i> <i>Back When We Were Grown-ups</i> <i>Digging to America</i> <i>A Spool of Blue Thread </i><i>Clock Dance </i><i>Redhead by the Side of the Road </i>and<i> French Braid.</i><br><br>In 1989 she won the Pulitzer Prize; in 1994 she was nominated by Roddy Doyle and Nick Hornby as 'the greatest novelist writing in English'; and in 2012 she received the <i>Sunday Times </i>Award for Literary Excellence. In 2015 <i>A Spool of Blue Thread </i>was shortlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction and the Booker Prize; and in 2020 <i>Redhead by the Side of the Road</i> was longlisted for the Booker Prize.</p> <p><b>Michael and Pauline seemed like the perfect couple - young good-looking made for each other.</b><br><br>The moment she walked into his mother's grocery store in Baltimore he was smitten and in the heat of World War II fervour they marry in haste. From the sound of the cash register in the old grocery to the counter-culture jargon of the sixties from the miniskirts to the multilayers of later years we watch their lives unspool and see the consequences of their very mismatched marriage.<br><br><b>**ANNE TYLER HAS SOLD OVER 8 MILLION BOOKS WORLDWIDE**</b><br><br><b>'Anne Tyler takes the ordinary the small and makes them sing' Rachel Joyce<br><br>'She knows all the secrets of the human heart' Monica Ali </b><br><br><b>'A masterly author' Sebastian Faulks</b><br><br><b>'I love Anne Tyler. I've read every single book she's written' Jacqueline Wilson</b></p> <p><b>Michael and Pauline seemed like the perfect couple - young good-looking made for each other.</b><br><br>The moment she walked into his mother's grocery store in Baltimore he was smitten and in the heat of World War II fervour they marry in haste. From the sound of the cash register in the old grocery to the counter-culture jargon of the sixties from the miniskirts to the multilayers of later years we watch their lives unspool and see the consequences of their very mismatched marriage.<br><br><b>**ANNE TYLER HAS SOLD OVER 8 MILLION BOOKS WORLDWIDE**</b><br><br><b>'Anne Tyler takes the ordinary the small and makes them sing' Rachel Joyce<br><br>'She knows all the secrets of the human heart' Monica Ali </b><br><br><b>'A masterly author' Sebastian Faulks</b><br><br><b>'I love Anne Tyler. I've read every single book she's written' Jacqueline Wilson</b></p>