Product Description

"Breathing Lessons" covers the events of a day in the life of Maggie Moran, nearing fifty, married to Ira and with two children. Her eternal optimism and her inexhaustible passion for sorting out other people's lives and willing them to fall in love is severely tested one hot summer day. Maggie and Ira drive from Baltimore to Deer Lick to attend the funeral of the husband of Serena, Maggie's childhood friend. During the course of the journey, with its several unexpected detours - into the lives of old friends and grown children - Anne Tyler shows us all there is to know about a marriage: the expectations; the disappointments; the way children can create storms in a family; the way the wife and husband can fall in love all over again; the way that everything - and nothing - changes.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7157 in Books
• Published on: 1998-01-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

Review
`her writing style is superb...there is humour...the dialogue both external and internal is fantastic'
--Savidge Reads...Books, Books, and Possibly More Books

From the Publisher
One of five Anne Tyler novels reissued in stunning new jackets

About the Author
Anne Tyler was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. Her first novel, If Morning Ever Comes, was published in 1964 whilst her 11th novel, Breathing Lessons, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988. In 1994, Tyler was nominated 'the greatest living novelist writing in English' by Roddy Doyle and Nick Hornby. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

Customer Reviews

The EXTRA-Ordinary Maggie
Let me tell you why I liked this book. It gave me a different perspective. Although many people (both readers and characters in the book) have criticised her for being one-dimensional I found her to be quite extraordinary. Her sensitivity and sense of place within her family is touching. The reason why her image radiates ordinariness is because everyone has labelled her that way. I found this to be true in the way that people often create labels for others and then the label is accepted as some kind of truth. Maggie may not be a likeable person or even a realistic person you can picture in your life, but certainly everyone can empathise with the tendency people have to suffocate other people with images they have created for them. I don't think Maggie is that simple. If she were than she could never imagine a life outside of her own. But, when she and Ira get in a fight in the car and she demands to be let out she imagines a completely different life for herself. This is the imaginary flight that is carried out in actuality in Ladder of Years. You could say that this is the off-handed daydream of a flat character because it is just as immediately forgotten as it is conjured. However, I think this suggests a more complex state of mind. One which can envision other states of being but consciously rejects them. Incidentally this is a very ordinary trait, one that I imagine many people can sympathise with. In some ways she is more ordinary than most people because she is always actively trying to normalise other people. She is not only suppressed by other people's images of her, but she is trying to mould everyone into the image she wants them to be. Her intentions are always positive. She wants them to be better people and fulfil their potential, but at the same time she is stifling their sense of individual identity by imaging them to inhabit an image that isn't realistic. This is a common difficulty with people who are "well-wishers". A major reason for why I appreciated this novel so much is because of its comic perspective. While dealing with the difficult relations between people, especially family, it is able to not take itself too seriously. There are incredibly comic moments such as the car accident and when Maggie and Ira are caught making out in the friend's bedroom. Anne Tyler is able to balance the serious and the comic while making shrewd observations about human nature. She shows us we all have the ability to be just like everyone else and wholly our own person at the same time.

Intriguingly absorbing
This is a book which you finish and feel that whilst you couldnt retell the tale, you know that you have enjoyed it and it takes some thought to pinpoint what kept you involved. The opening pages allow the reader direct access into Maggies mind, and its airy fairy female workings. Whilst denting the newly fixed car is unimportant, obsessing over the long since failed relationship of her son and his wife, or the anguish she may have unthinkingly caused a fellow motorist are paramount in Maggies mind. The abyss of misunderstanding that lies between herself and her husband Ira stems blatantly from the different machinations of their minds, although both have the capacity to feel passionately, over their given preoccupation. As a female reader you feel that Anne Tyler has in some way exposed what lies within a womans head, and further illustrated the tolerances that exist within a successful relationship that allow for these contrasting modes of thought to exist. Read this because it is well written and adds to our understanding of human nature.

brilliant
This is the best of Anne Tyler's books. It is very funny and moving at the same time and all its characters are totally believable. I truly cared about them and felt sad when the book was over.