Audio Book Description:
They seemed like the perfect couple- young, good looking, made for each other. The moment Pauline, a stranger tothe Polish Eastern Avenue neighborhoodof Baltimore, walked into his mother`s grocery store, Michael was smitten. And in the heat of World War II fervor, theyare propelled into a hasty wedding. Butthey never should have married. Pauline, impulsive, impractical, tumbles hit-or-miss through life; Michael, plodding, cautious, judgementalproceeds deliberately. While other youngmarrieds, equally ignorant at the start,seemed to grow more seasoned to grow more seasoned, Pauline and Michaelremain amateurs. In time their foolish quarrels take their toll. Even when they find themselves, almost thirty years later, loving, instant parentsto a little grandson named Pagan, whom they rescue from Haight-Ashbury, they still cannot bridge their deep-rooted differences. Flighty Pauline clings tothe notion that the rifts can always be patched. To the notion that the rifts can always be patched. To the unyeildingMichael, they become unbearable. From the sound of the cashregisterin the old grocery to the counter-culturejargon of the sixties, Anne Tyler captures the evocative nuanceof everyday life during these decades with sucj telling precision that every page brings smiles of recognition. Throughout, as each of the comperingvoices bears witness, we are drawn ever more fully into the complex entanglementof family life in this wise, embracing, and deeply perceptive novel.
