Breathing Lessons (Magill Book Reviews)

From the moment that Maggie Moran picks up the newly repaired family Dodge at the garage, becomes distracted by the radio, and speeds into the path of a Pepsi truck, it is clear that the day described by Anne Tyler in her novel BREATHING LESSONS will not be uneventful. In fact, the Saturday when Ira and Maggie Moran travel ninety miles from Baltimore to Deer Lick, Pennsylvania, in order to attend a funeral, becomes a summary of the twenty-eight-year marriage of two people who are opposites in temperament and interests, who are constantly at cross-purposes, and who are plagued by difficult in-laws and disappointing offspring. No wonder that the day is marked by quarrels, confrontations, detours, accidents, and disasters; however, like the marriage, it is saved by the fact that Maggie and Ira keep falling helplessly in love.

Like Anne Tyler’s other novels, BREATHING LESSONS is pervaded by a sense of place. The place is Baltimore, a Southern city, where this book begins and ends, and indeed whose atmosphere seems to move with Ira and Maggie as they travel. Tyler’s characters in BREATHING LESSONS are similar to those in her other works: people who are ordinary in station but extraordinary in imagination, people who have the strength to espouse their eccentricities. While Tyler’s characters never realize their dreams, they have the will to keep trying and the power to love. Perhaps one reason for her popularity is the tone of her books. Like Eudora Welty, Tyler writes of real people, sometimes comically, sometimes seriously, but always affectionately. The reader must respect her characters, who, although they seem to keep returning to the same place and the same situations, continue to grow in stature.

Sources for Further Study

Booklist. LXXXIV, July, 1988, p. 1756.

Kirkus Reviews. LVI, July 1, 1988, p. 931.

Library Journal. CXIII, September 1, 1988, p. 184.

Los Angeles Times Book Review. September 11, 1988, p. 3.

Ms. XVII, September, 1988, p. 86.

The Nation. CCXLVII, November 7, 1988, p. 464.

The New York Times. CXXXVIII, September 3, 1988, p. 13.

The New York Times Book Review. XCIII, September 11, 1988, p. 1.

The New Yorker. LXIV, November 28, 1988, p. 121.

Newsweek. CXII, September 26, 1988, p. 73.

Publishers Weekly. CCXXXIV, July 1, 1988, p. 67.

Time. CXXXII, September 5, 1988, p. 75.