Rating: 
Summary: life, in all its uplifting mediocrity
Review: After reading the perfectly depressing "Amateur Marriage" I re-opened this novel, which I had read nearly two decades ago. In an instant, I was transported into the sad yet zany and hopeful world of Maggie: she meddles and fumbles, but has a good heart and never really messes anything up seriously. All of these lives are displayed with an arresting charm, through illusions, lost hopes, and the real value that there can be in a marriage that lasts in spite of all its frustrations and even its mediocrity. At least for me, this is very very moving and nakedly realistic, even wise. It is also charming in Tyler's hands and often comic without ever traducing the realism. Indeed, this novel has all of the virtues that "Amateur" lacked and I think it is a far better performance that addresses many of the same realities - just with characters that are more likable, more interesting, more fun.Warmly recommended as a masterpiece of the mundane. Tyler makes Baltimore - of all places! - immortal. I loved it.
Rating:
Summary: Completely Credible Characters
Review: So many reviewers have gone over the plot, so I shall spare you yet another repetition. Like many, I was annoyed throughout at the level of dysfunction displayed by all the characters and not just Maggie; but this proves a point. Like most reviewers, including those who disliked this book, Anne Tyler thoroughly involves the reader in her story. I enjoyed this book as I have other Anne Tyler's books, basically because I find them "easy reads", stories that hold my attention, make me laugh and keep me turning pages. If I am any judge, then I feel that Breathing Lessons comes through as a deceptively simple story, as Anne Tyler is a master in control of her novel which is technically brilliant, humorous and filled with completely credible characters.
Rating: 
Summary: A Haunting and Fascinating Book
Review: It is interesting to see how people review this book and how some loved it and some hated it. I personally love Anne Tyler and this book is an amazing work.
The book has just the right amount of humor and drama. I felt by the end that I really knew the characters. I read it when I was 15 and reading it three years later I have learned to appreciate it more. I don't feel Maggie was condescending at all, she just desperately wanted to hold onto the past. Ira, although tactless, truly believed the truth would set people free. He was just that kind of person. Maggie had such high expectations for her son and truly believed he could do no wrong, whereas Ira probably saw a person who was living a life free of responsiblity. The book was so intricate with people's lives it seemed so real. I know people just like them. No one had bad intentions, no one was malicious, they just all had faults and I think the moral was that you just love people for who they are.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful book
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Breathing Lessons--A disappointment.
Review: This is probably one of the strangest books I've ever read. It's the story of one day in the life of Maggie Moran, a woman obsessed with having everything her own way. She goes about with the stubborn determination and skill of Lucille Ball, making a mess of everyone's lives, all the while telling herself that it's all for the best. I'm not sure if the story was supposed to be humorous, but I was not amused. According to the flyleaf, this is supposed to be about 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 that everything--and nothing--changes." Well, okay, that pretty much sums it up, but I found this book neither endearing nor enlightening. It was a long, dreary walk through the mind of a woman who is selfish, confused, and manipulative. She fabricates and embellishes truth to suit her purpose, makes excuses for her lack of parenting and the slacker son she ends up with as a result. She has an excuse for everything she messes up, and in her mind it's all okay so long as things turn out the way she wants them to. The end justifies the means. The story winds through a convoluted day with her husband tagging along offering up very little resistance to her schemes and plans, and even at the end when he tells her that it's over and that she just has to accept things, she still begins planning what she will be doing the next day to "fix" things. I'm not sure what the author's intent was. If she wanted me to dislike Maggie, to be frustrated at her inability to face the truth and her dogged determination to manipulate everyone in her life, to be bored senseless with her vapid, selfish thoughts, then she succeeded beyond her wildest dreams. If this was supposed to be about marriage, I feel sorry for anybody whose marriage is like this! If I was supposed to feel that her husband, Ira, loved her in spite of herself, I didn't quite get there. I felt that he mostly was resigned to his life and had learned to put up with her. If I was supposed to feel some sympathy for Maggie, who was suffering from middle age crisis and empty nest syndrome, I'm sorry, I didn't feel one bit sorry for her. She created this horrible mess and people were deserting her faster than rats on a sinking ship. If I'd lived in that house, I would have been the first one to bail. I couldn't find a single redeeming feature to this story. It wasn't fascinating, it wasn't funny, it wasn't representative of anything resembingling real life. I've known some manipulative people in my life, but no one as extreme as this. I didn't hate it, but I can't recommend it. 2 stars.
Rating:
Summary: life, in all its uplifting mediocrity
Review: After reading the perfectly depressing "Amateur Marriage" I re-opened this novel, which I had read nearly two decades ago. In an instant, I was transported into the sad yet zany and hopeful world of Maggie: she meddles and fumbles, but has a good heart and never really messes anything up seriously. All of these lives are displayed with an arresting charm, through illusions, lost hopes, and the real value that there can be in a marriage that lasts in spite of all its frustrations and even its mediocrity. At least for me, this is very very moving and nakedly realistic, even wise. It is also charming in Tyler's hands and often comic without ever traducing the realism. Indeed, this novel has all of the virtues that "Amateur" lacked and I think it is a far better performance that addresses many of the same realities - just with characters that are more likable, more interesting, more fun. Warmly recommended as a masterpiece of the mundane. Tyler makes Baltimore - of all places! - immortal. I loved it.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing
Review: What a disappointing book especially after reading The Accidental Tourist, which I liked. I admired the character Ira for his love and loyalty to Maggie, but both are losers who let life just happen to them. Ira is a depressed man and Maggie needs to get a life. She was so annoying and I was so disappointed by the end. The details just went on and on and I kept hoping it would get better. In the end, I felt so sorry for Fiona and Leroy. Maggie is cruel and selfish. I was appalled that she continued preparing dinner when Fiona just found out that not only Jesse didn't give a hoot about her soap box, he was seeing someone else, all going on in front of her granddaughter.
Rating:
Summary: Soooo special
Review: Ann Tyler specializes in opposites and what attracts them to each other. The bulk of Breathing Lessons takes place during a car ride from Maryland to Pennsylvania that a middle-age couple, bound together by who-knows-what, take to attend a funeral. Most of Tyler's characters are misfits or eccentrics. In Breathing Lessons, she focuses on a couple so average as to be boring, and nothing much happens to them by the end of the trip/book. But we, her readers, come to understand the serious business of relationships and the ties that bind. Hilarious in spots, as all of her books are, it is the poignant insights into the moments that show this couple in all their everyday uniqueness that we remember long after closing the book.
Rating:
Summary: Most annoying book I ever remember reading...
Review: This must be the most annoying book I can ever remember reading. The lead character Maggie just made me feel like slapping her! So at least in that respect the book did provoke an emotional reaction. I forced myself to finish the book and now wonder why...
Rating:
Summary: God Awful
Review: I must say, this book was the worst book I have ever read. Where to begin? Ah yes! It seems only logical to start with Maggie. She is what I envision when someone mentions a human tornado. Maggie moves through life trying to manipulate people into some ideal that she has, but only succeeds in ripping their lives to shreds. Her conniving succeeds in bringing about catostrophic arguments between her son Jesse and his ex-wife Fiona, which one can imagine will scar their poor daughter, Leroy. I would also classify Maggie as the type of person who is known for snatching kids out of carts at the grocery store. She only wants Jesse and Fiona to get back together so that she can take care of Leroy. God only knows what she would do when Leroy grows up, but I can imagine her snagging some child off the playground. Ira is also a distructive force in the novel, but his comes from pent-up self hatred. Ira detests the way his life has gone, but rather than blame himself, he blames his wife, his son, and his father and sisters. He doesn't say much in the novel, but when he does speak, the comments are usually derisive and harsh. He airs other poeple's dirty laundry (such as when he tells Fiona that Jesse has been sleeping with another woman), and he calls his own son hopeless and worthless. All in all, I can't say that he gets my vote for Father of the Year. The only people I felt sorry for in this pitifully tragic work were Jesse, Fiona, and especially Leroy. Jesse and Fiona are the pawns in Maggie's insane game, beeing lead arround by her in an ever more devious lie. Leroy is even more innocent, for she is a child with high hopes of meeting her father (hopes planted by Maggie) only to have those hopes dashed by a severly tramatizing family argument. This book is supposed to be this great insite into marriage, but I found it to be more of a glimpse into how far a person will go to make their make-believe wonderland come to life. I can't say as I would recommend this book to anyone.
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