Book Review: "Breathing Lessons" by Anne Tyler

Anne Tyler is one of my favourite living writers because she very rarely writes a bad book. She could write something that I would never have thought I would read, and I can guarantee that knowing she wrote it would get me interested immediately. She is one of the few great voices of her era left in literature - that special time where modernism was gaining its own voice and, over the turn of the decades, books took on a whole new meaning and experience. Able to set her books here or there, past or present, Anne Tyler proves that she is still able to thrill us with the extraordinary idea of everyday experiences both internal and external. She's probably the closest author we have to Virginia Woolf.

Imagine being late for a wedding. Okay, now imagine being late for a funeral. Well, as our main characters are about to find out, as a married couple not everything can be agreed on. Maggie and her husband Ira must travel to a funeral, a journey which will be wrought with almost Huckleberry Finn-esque dilemmas. Maggie will attempt to be agreeable with her husband, who is more than just disagreeable - he seems like a complete misathrope for the whole first half of the book. It is something that I think Anne Tyler does well, her dichotomy of characters producing much needed and well-written intrigue, dialogues and arguments.

I think that another one of Anne Tyler's greatest traits is almost this Richard Yates kind of loneliness. Both Maggie and Ira have completely forgotten about the dreams they had when they were younger and settled down for an ordinary life, no matter how much they both struggle to make it ordinary and bland. You can almost feel them sometimes, bursting at the seams, almost ripping through the pages to communicate with the reader about how discontented they actually are. Only really saving face for the other person involved - they are on a journey to rediscover and reconcile with themselves, not just attend a funeral.

Then we have Jesse and Fiona. Jesse is Maggie and Ira's son and he dropped out of high school - yet another battered dream. He also made the seventeen-year-old Fiona pregnant. Maggie did not want the girl to have an abortion and now, there is a discontented set of parents who are also the younger generation of forgotten dreamers. It is really a family thing with this lot. One thing Anne Tyler does well here is makes Maggie look like both the hero and the villain at the same time.

Her traditional sentimentalities litter the book with things she pushes other people into, her expectations are almost contradictory to the situation she wants, she is sometimes exasperating and egotistical, believing she knows best. But, she is also the only one holding the family together, an image of boomer-era motherhood which tries its best to be loveable and kind, saves face and also, tries to tell others what to do as if it is a holier-than-thou determiner of her existence.

Anne Tyler's books never disappoint me at all and if I remember correctly, the only score I've given her less than five was three and a half. Her books often contain these opposing characters. Such as Ira, who is Maggie's exact opposite. He does not care, or at least pretends like it doesn't impact his existence in any way. He is uncommunicative, unemotional and unempathetic, or at least that is what he shows his wife and the outside world. He spends the majority of the first half of the book in complaint about going, but for Maggie to get him to go, she must display the characteristics he finds most annoying, yet ironically, the very reason he married her - the traditional wifely traits.

All in all, it is a brilliant novel where not a lot happens, but a lot takes place. There are thoughts and minds of characters, the chaos of the psychology of Maggie and the marriage, falling apart and saved at the same time. Anne Tyler's domestic intrigue takes to the road to follow a couple on both a physical and a metaphorical journey, where they both must change for the better - or else.