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Breathing Lessons
Breathing Lessons
Author: Anne Tyler
"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...  more »
ISBN-13: 9785553665890
ISBN-10: 5553665892
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Publisher: Books On Tape
Book Type: Audio Cassette
Other Versions: Paperback, Hardcover, Audio CD
Members Wishing: 0
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Top Member Book Reviews

reviewed Breathing Lessons on + 43 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 4
One of Anne Tyler's best books. She gets the domestic relationship between this husband and wife just right. Lovely book.
reviewed Breathing Lessons on
Helpful Score: 3
We read this delightful Pulitzer Prize winner in our book club a few months ago and had one of our liveliest discussions ever! It seemed as though each of us could relate to at least one of the characters - either we had known someone who was just like a character or (even funnier) we could see something of ourselves in one of the characters!

And if you're an Anne Tyler fan, this one is a must!
reviewed Breathing Lessons on + 4 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 3
Did not care for this book - very disappointing!
reviewed Breathing Lessons on + 11 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 3
Discovering the extraordinary in the ordinary.
kimdep avatar reviewed Breathing Lessons on + 39 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 2
I really enjoyed this book. It was a pretty fast read, especially for a Pulitzer Prize winner. There are touching moments and hilarious moments as well. It's about a woman who is a wife, mother, grandmother & friend. She is reflective about her many roles in life as she is travelling to a friend's husband's funeral with her husband, all the while she is trying to develop a plan to reunite her son & estranged daughter-in-law. She has some adventures & eventually comes to accept herself and her life as it is and that is really satisfying.
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reviewed Breathing Lessons on
We read this Pulitzer Prize-winner in our book club a few months back and had one of our liveliest discussions ever! It seemed we could all relate to at least one of the characters in the story --- either we could see ourselves in a character or we knew someone who was "just like him/her". A quick read and very enjoyable. If you're an Anne Tyler fan, don't pass this one up!
emeraldfire avatar reviewed Breathing Lessons on
Maggie and Ira Moran have been married for twenty-eight years and it shows. Maggie is an easy-going free spirit: impetuous, reckless and unpredictable. Her husband Ira is Maggie's polar opposite: amazingly competent, infuriatingly practical and seemingly infallible. Yet, despite all the countless petty squabbles, annoying routines and various personal eccentricities experienced in their life together, Maggie and Ira have managed to make their marriage work for almost thirty years.

Maggie considers herself to be a romantic matchmaker of sorts. Her life's ultimate mission is to unite people and bring couples together; whether they want to be connected or not. Ira secretly wonders if he should have married Ann Landers. In truth, Maggie is a meddler - a well-meaning meddler, yes, but a meddler nonetheless. She is a soft and loving person; who is determined to see only the innate goodness and limitless potential in the people she loves.

On a particularly hot summer day, the couple is driving to Deer Lick, Pennsylvania - ninety miles from their home in Baltimore - to attend the funeral of Maggie's best friend's husband. During the course of that journey, with its several unexpected detours along the way - into the lives of old friends and fully grown children, into fond memories of the past and valiant, if misguided, attempts to rearrange the present - the entire intimate story of a marriage is revealed. All the expectations, the disappointments; the way children can create storms within a family; the way that wife and husband can fall in love with each other all over again; the way that everything - and nothing - changes.

When I first started reading this book, I was expecting it to be relatively uneventful; even slightly boring. However, the story really was very interesting to me. I have always enjoyed reading Anne Tyler's work - in my opinion, she always does an excellent job with characterization and plotting. This was just such a book - a quick and easy read for me; pleasant and poignant, and filled with intricately familiar and well-developed characters. I give this book an A+!
reviewed Breathing Lessons on + 38 more book reviews
Food for thought. Great Characters.
reviewed Breathing Lessons on + 36 more book reviews
Writer lives in Marin County. You get a flavor of life there.
reviewed Breathing Lessons on
I loved this book! Anne Tyler took everyday events and quirky ways of thinking and wove them into it. The main character sees herself so very differently than others see her and this frustrates her. As an example of her quirkiness, she gets mad at her husband and is going to leave him... she stops at the store immediately after deciding to do so and finds herself thinking how she wished she had the coupon for the shampoo with her. Her mind just changed tracks and the people in her life realize she has a tendency of doing so. It is not that she is cold an unfeeling... quite the opposite. She cares a great deal for the people around her. The people around her love her despite the zaniness and I think that is the really neat part.
reviewed Breathing Lessons on + 41 more book reviews
Fascinating - couldn't put this one down!
glowingstar avatar reviewed Breathing Lessons on + 28 more book reviews
Entertaining, funny, touching & inciteful.
lee-in-iowa avatar reviewed Breathing Lessons on + 17 more book reviews
LA Times says, "I don't know if there is a better American writer going...impossible to compare...vision is too individual." From the book jacket: En route here to a character's friend's husband's funeral, "with several unexpected detours---into the lives of old friends and grown children, into memories of the past and attempts to rearrange the... more » present--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 that wife and husband can fall in love all over again; the way the everything-and nothing--changes."


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