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Breathing Lessons | Introduction

A highly regarded author of short stories and novels, Anne Tyler is known for her fiction that explores the vicissitudes of human existence in late twentieth-century America. Tyler's readers readily identify with her complex characters and see their own experiences mirrored in her fiction. She often makes her readers laugh out loud, but she also makes them think—about life, loss, family, death, and all aspects of the human condition.

Breathing Lessons is Tyler's eleventh book. Winner of the 1989 Pulitzer Prize for fiction as well as Time magazine's Book of the Year, it is the story of the "run-of-the-mill marriage" of Ira and Maggie Moran. The story explores the joys and tabulations of marriage, as Maggie and Ira travel from Baltimore to a funeral and home in one day.

Breathing Lessons Summary

Part One: The Funeral
The novel opens with Ira reflecting on the amount of waste in the world, including his own life. Ira runs his father's picture framing business in Baltimore, while Maggie works as a nurse in a nursing home. On this Saturday they are preparing to go to a funeral, and Maggie is picking up their car from the mechanic's shop. As she drives home, she listens to a call-in radio program, and is convinced that the woman announcing her impending marriage is former daughter-in-law, Fiona. She collects Ira and they set out for the funeral in rural Pennsylvania.

Ira and Maggie argue in the car as he grows increasingly impatient with her wish to drop in and see Fiona and their granddaughter, Leroy. Nearly lost, they stop to buy a map and get coffee in a small town. While Ira checks the map, Maggie confides her family woes in a waitress—much to her husband's disgust. They start driving again, but Maggie becomes so upset that she demands to be let out at the side of the road. A half an hour passes while she constructs an imaginary new life and remembers a brief infatuation with a distinguished nursing home resident. Ira picks her up and they continue their journey.

The Morans are the first to arrive at the church for the funeral. The widow—Maggie's oldest friend, Serena—arrives, and informs them that she wants them to recreate her wedding service as a memorial. This will involve singing the songs from the wedding; in Maggie and Ira's case, a duel of "Love is a Many Splendored Thing." In a key scene. Serena advises Maggie to "throw ii all away": to allow things and people to pass out of her life. As other mourners arrive, they either agree or refuse to recreate Serena's wedding ceremony.

Later, Serena shows a film of her marriage ceremony from many... » Complete Breathing Lessons Summary