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Breathing Lessons
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  • Published: 3 November 1992
  • ISBN: 9780099201410
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 336
  • RRP: $24.99

Breathing Lessons

Formats & editions
Audiobook
22 May 2014
Paperback
3 Nov 1992
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A striking and joyous new look for the novels of one of the greatest storytellers of our time

Meet Maggie Moran.

Nearing fifty and married with two children, she and her husband drive from Baltimore to Deer Lick to attend the funeral of a friend one hot summer day.

During the course of the journey, with its several unexpected detours into the lives of old friends and grown children, Maggie's eternal optimism and her inexhaustible passion for sorting out other people's lives and willing them to fall in love is severely tested...

**ANNE TYLER HAS SOLD OVER 8 MILLION BOOKS WORLDWIDE**

'Anne Tyler takes the ordinary, the small, and makes them sing' Rachel Joyce

'She knows all the secrets of the human heart' Monica Ali

'A masterly author' Sebastian Faulks

'I love Anne Tyler. I've read every single book she's written' Jacqueline Wilson
  • Published: 3 November 1992
  • ISBN: 9780099201410
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 336
  • RRP: $24.99
Categories:

About the author

Anne Tyler

Anne Tyler was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1941 and grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. Her bestselling novels include Breathing Lessons, The Accidental Tourist, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, Ladder of Years, Back When We Were Grown-ups, Digging to America, A Spool of Blue Thread, Clock Dance, Redhead by the Side of the Road and French Braid.

In 1989 she won the Pulitzer Prize; in 1994 she was nominated by Roddy Doyle and Nick Hornby as 'the greatest novelist writing in English'; and in 2012 she received the Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence. In 2015 A Spool of Blue Thread was shortlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction and the Booker Prize; and in 2020 Redhead by the Side of the Road was longlisted for the Booker Prize.

portrait photo of Anne Tyler

Also by Anne Tyler

Three Days in June
French Braid
Redhead by the Side of the Road
Anne Tyler: Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, Ladder of Years & The Amateur Marriage
Clock Dance
Half-truths and Semi-miracles
Vinegar Girl
See all

Praise for Breathing Lessons

A novel by Anne Tyler is a subject for rejoicing...Breathing Lessons is a pleasure

The Times

A major achievement

Irish Times

Anne Tyler has a real gift for generating tender and amazing moments

Independent

Displays her extraordinary gifts in supreme harmony: exquisite narrative clarity, faultless comic timing, and the Tyler trademark of happy-sad characters inspiring a mid-American domestic drama that somehow slips the surly bonds of the quotidian to become timeless and universal

Guardian, Best 100 Novels of all time

A work of art

Guardian

Her finest novel

Irish Times

Tyler has such warmth of spirit that almost any novel by her is an escapist pleasure. But this is her masterpiece - one day in the life of a fifty something couple as they journey to a funeral and have their lives laid out in front of us. The book won the Pulitzer and is as human and generous as they come

Stig Abell, Sunday Times

Anne Tyler's characters are simultaneously funny and sad, heroic and pathetic and none more so than Maggie and Ira...you end up thinking you've known this family all your life

John O'Farrell

A novel by Anne Tyler is a subject for rejoicing...Breathing Lessons is a pleasure to read

The Times

Breathing Lessons is a work of art, kindling a whole world of feeling out of such trivia as remembered popular songs from the time of one's adolescence, presenting to the reader a series of plain perceptions which seem to touch a completeness beyond themselves

Guardian

An arresting slice of Baltimore life

Independent

Her writing style is superb...there is humour...the dialogue both external and internal is fantastic

Savidge Reads

Funny, poignant and reflective

Katie Allan, Easy Living

Displays her extraordinary gifts in supreme harmony: exquisite narrative clarity, faultless comic timing, and the Tyler trademark of happy-sad characters inspiring a mid-American domestic drama that somehow slips the surly bonds of the quotidian to becometimeless and universal

Robert McCrum, Guardian, Best 100 Novels of all time

Anne Tyler has a real gift for generating tender and amazing moments

Adam Mars-Jones, Independent

Her finest novel… A major achievement

Irish Times

A novel by Anne Tyler is a subject for rejoicing...Breathing Lessons is a pleasure

The Times

A major achievement

Irish Times

Anne Tyler has a real gift for generating tender and amazing moments

Independent

Displays her extraordinary gifts in supreme harmony: exquisite narrative clarity, faultless comic timing, and the Tyler trademark of happy-sad characters inspiring a mid-American domestic drama that somehow slips the surly bonds of the quotidian to become timeless and universal

Guardian, Best 100 Novels of all time

A work of art

Guardian

Her finest novel

Irish Times

Tyler has such warmth of spirit that almost any novel by her is an escapist pleasure. But this is her masterpiece - one day in the life of a fifty something couple as they journey to a funeral and have their lives laid out in front of us. The book won the Pulitzer and is as human and generous as they come

Stig Abell, Sunday Times