Breathing Lessons

by Anne Tyler

Book Overview

Maggie and Ira Moran have been married for twenty-eight years?and it shows: in their quarrels, in their routines, in their ability to tolerate with affection each other?s eccentricities. Maggie, a kooky, lovable meddler and an irrepressible optimist, wants nothing more than to fix her son?s broken marriage. Ira is infuriatingly practical, a man ?who should have married Ann Landers.? And what begins as a day trip to a funeral becomes an adventure in...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0394572343
• ISBN13: 9780394572345
• Release Date: January 1988
• Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
• Length: 5 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A Breath of Fresh Air

Here's a good litmus test to show how good a book like "Breathing Lessons" is--nothing extraordinary happens and yet I did not want to put the book down. There are no conspiracies to rule the world or cover up some dark secret. There are no car chases, explosions, sex scenes (barely even any kissing), or exotic locations. No one changes or has an epiphany. Almost NOTHING happens--Maggie and Ira go to a funeral and when they come back they try to reunite their son and former daughter-in-law but nothing changes at all. To the average reader this book probably would seem really dull. Heck, if someone told me the plot of this book I'd think it was really dull too, but I didn't want to put it down. The reason is that Maggie and Ira are so well-drawn and so familiar to me that they seem like people I know or COULD know. I think I could go to the supermarket and run into Maggie and Ira, that's how real they seemed to me. I suppose ther reason is that Tyler allows me as the reader to know just about everything regarding these two characters and their two personalities just come through so transparently in the story that they don't seem like CHARACTERS acting their parts; they seem like real people. Because of this, even though very little happens to Maggie or Ira and even though neither of them changes by the end of the book, I cared so much about them that I wanted to keep reading right through the end so I breezed through the novel in a few days. In all honesty, what I really appreciate about this book is that it seemingly disproves almost everything I've ever read about how to write a book. This is purely a character-driven novel with very little "plot" except for the death of Maggie's friend's husband that gets the ball rolling. Everything else seems to happen so naturally as an extension of Maggie's personality more than any artificially-generated plot twists. It's hard for me to find any real faults with this book, except for the lengthy flashback near the end that perhaps goes on too long. Some people may call this boring or dull, but I would call it purely exceptional. I LOVED this book and highly recommend it.

Beautiful book

I am a huge Anne Tyler fan - I want to read her entire collection. Because this novel won a Pulitzer, I was concerned it would not live up to the hype. My concerns were unwarranted. Tyler is a highly skilled writer who is able to take ordinary people and make them both unique and interesting. She has a very important message to give readers about love, marriage, and life. The main characters are at a stage in their lives where they are looking back and trying to figure out how they got to be where they are, and where to go now. I know many dislike Maggie Moran, but I didn't. I felt an incredible amount of empathy for her. She is a good person who only wants to give the people she loves hope. She sees the best in people and wants them to live up to the potential she knows they have. She is the eternal wide- eyed optimist. Clearly, Maggie is feeling lost at the thought of having an empty nest. If she doesn't someone to take care of, she doesn't know who she is or how to live. She's lost at the thought of facing middle age. Ira is also a great character. He's Maggie's opposite. He's a pragmatic, grounded, realist. They both have regrets about their past choices, and they need to find a way to let those go and keep moving, so that the rest of their lives can have meaning. I loved the use of flashbacks in the novel. Tyler really showed the different perspectives of the characters, and she enlightened the reader as to how they came to be the people they are. I couldn't imagine Maggie or Ira turning out any differently, given their families of origin. I didn't like how Ira treated his son, Jesse, but I could understand it, because Tyler gives me enough background about Ira's youth to make it fit. I could feel the love and connection between Maggie and Ira, even when they were at their most frustrated with each other. There's a wonderful line in a Reader's Digest essay on love I once read that sums up Maggie and Ira's marriage: "We sometimes could have killed each other, but we never could have left each other." Maggie and Ira need each other's different perspectives. There were a few things missing from the novel. I did wish at times that we could've had more information about what really happened between Jesse and his ex-wife. I still don't quite understand why they broke up, and I was intrigued by those characters enough that I want to know, even though I realized that this is Maggie and Ira's story. I also wanted to know more about Daisy. What was her place in the family? How did she interact with her mother? This is one of the few novels I've read that actually could have been longer.

The first Anne Tyler book I ever read, and the best

I am surprised by the lack of enthusiasm other customer reviewers have felt toward this book. Breathing Lessons is my absolute favorite book by Anne Tyler. I even have a copy in Italian (Lezioni di Respiro)! Anne Tyler is the only author I have read who can capture everyday small things and give them personality and power. Just read the first paragraph when Maggie is walking down the street pulling up her stockings--how accurate and cute. Capturing the whole family in a story that lasts from sun up till sun down reflects the same technique the Greeks used in their plays. Anne Tyler is a genius here--giving meaning to the lives of these simple people. Breathing Lessons is a testimony of faith toward very common everyday folks. More so than any of her books, one can identify with the characters in this book. In fact, we can see them in our own lives.

A Loving, realistic portrayal of a Family--A True Gem

Anne Tyler has been praised by writers of the caliber of John Updike for her unique talent to write wonderful "domestic" novels, and Breathing Lessons is an outstanding example. Rarely have I encountered a writer who manages to infuse such love, humor and observation into their work. In Breathing Lessons, Tyler fleshes out characters that will stay in your heart long after the last page has been turned. With their flaws and quirks, their strengths and weaknesses, one feels Tyler could be writing about our own lives. Maggie Moran, and the world she inhabits with her stalwart husband Ira, is another addition to the marvelous cast of characters that Tyler has given to us in her 14 novels. Read anything by Tyler, she is a consistently top-notch writer (Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, The Accidental Tourist), but use Breathing Lessons as your port of entry. You'll thank your luck for finding such a gem.

Tyler's characterization is surrealistic

As I was reading others' reactions to this novel, I found that many complained about Maggie's annoying character and how her scatterbrainedness seemed to detract from the story. Although I have to agree that this character enraged me at points in the story, I would also like to inform these critics that IF AN AUTHOR CAN CHARACTERIZE A PERSON IN THE STORY SO WELL THAT A READER IS REPULSED BY HER, SHE CERTAINLY DESERVES RECOGNITION, and this is the conclusion I have come to in my process of assessing this novel for my English class. Yes, it went slow; yes, the characters were sometimes aggravating. But Tyler's books are some of the most skillfully written which I have ever had the experience of reading. She reinforces the sacred institution that marriage is, gives us a model in Ira's patience, and shows us how important a person at whom you can, as Serena told Maggie, steal a glance when others are bothering you and you can't complain out loud. Rather than complaining because this book isn't the shallow, exciting "story" that typical readers expect, let's praise Anne Tyler for her skill.