{"product_id":"breathing-lessons-isbn-9780345485571","title":"Breathing Lessons","description":"\u003cb\u003eWINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE \u003cb\u003e•\u003c\/b\u003e \u003ci\u003eNEW YORK TIMES\u003c\/i\u003e BESTSELLER \u003cb\u003e•\u003c\/b\u003e Evoking Jane Austen, Emma Straub, and other masters of the literary marriage, \u003ci\u003eBreathing Lessons\u003c\/i\u003e celebrates the small miracles and magic of truly knowing someone.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eUnfolding over the course of a single emotionally fraught day, this stunning novel encompasses a lifetime of dreams, regrets and reckonings—and is oftern regarded as Tyler's seminal work. Maggie and Ira Moran are on a road trip from Baltimore, Maryland to Deer Lick, Pennsylvania to attend the funeral of a friend. Along the way, they reflect on the state of their marriage, its trials and its triumphs—through their quarrels, their routines, and their ability to tolerate each other’s faults with patience and affection. Where Maggie is quirky, lovable and mischievous, Ira is practical, methodical and mired in reason. What begins as a day trip becomes a revelatory and unexpected journey, as Ira and Maggie rediscover the strength of their bond and the joy of having somebody with whom to share the ride, bumps and all.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“More powerful and moving than anything [Tyler] has done.” —\u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c\/i\u003e“Superb fiction: It shows us how to live.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003eNewsday\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A wonderful novel, glowing with the insight and compassion of an artist’s touch.”\u003ci\u003e —The Boston Globe\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “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.” —“The 100 Best Novels,” \u003ci\u003eThe Guardian\u003c\/i\u003eANNE TYLER was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1941 and grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. She is the author of more than twenty novels. Her twentieth novel, \u003ci\u003eA Spool of Blue Thread,\u003c\/i\u003e was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2015. Her eleventh novel, \u003ci\u003eBreathing Lessons,\u003c\/i\u003e was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1989. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland.Chapter 1\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Maggie and Ira Moran had to go to a funeral in Deer Lick, Pennsylvania.  Maggie’s girlhood friend had lost her husband. Deer Lick lay on a narrow  country road some ninety miles north of Baltimore, and the funeral was  scheduled for ten-thirty Saturday morning; so Ira figured they should  start around eight. This made him grumpy. (He was not an early-morning  kind of man.) Also Saturday was his busiest day at work, and he had no one  to cover for him. Also their car was in the body shop. It had needed  extensive repairs and Saturday morning at opening time, eight o’clock  exactly, was the soonest they could get it back. Ira said maybe they’d  just better not go, but Maggie said they had to. She and Serena had been  friends forever. Or nearly forever: forty-two years, beginning with Miss  Kimmel’s first grade.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    They planned to wake up at seven, but Maggie must have set the alarm wrong  and so they overslept. They had to dress in a hurry and rush through  breakfast, making do with faucet coffee and cold cereal. Then Ira headed  off for the store on foot to leave a note for his customers, and Maggie  walked to the body shop. She was wearing her best dress—blue and white  sprigged, with cape sleeves—and crisp black pumps, on account of the  funeral. The pumps were only medium-heeled but slowed her down some  anyway; she was more used to crepe soles. Another problem was that the  crotch of her panty hose had somehow slipped to about the middle of her  thighs, so she had to take shortened, unnaturally level steps like a  chunky little windup toy wheeling along the sidewalk.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Luckily, the body shop was only a few blocks away. (In this part of town  things were intermingled—small frame houses like theirs sitting among  portrait photographers’ studios, one-woman beauty parlors, driving  schools, and podiatry clinics.) And the weather was perfect—a warm, sunny  day in September, with just enough breeze to cool her face. She patted  down her bangs where they tended to frizz out like a forelock. She hugged  her dress-up purse under her arm. She turned left at the corner and there  was Harbor Body and Fender, with the peeling green garage doors already  hoisted up and the cavernous interior smelling of some sharp-scented paint  that made her think of nail polish.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    She had her check all ready and the manager said the keys were in the car,  so in no time she was free to go. The car was parked toward the rear of  the shop, an elderly gray-blue Dodge. It looked better than it had in  years. They had straightened the rear bumper, replaced the mangled trunk  lid, ironed out a half-dozen crimps here and there, and covered over the  dapples of rust on the doors. Ira was right: no need to buy a new car  after all. She slid behind the wheel. When she turned the ignition key,  the radio came on—Mel Spruce’s AM Baltimore, a call-in talk show. She let  it run, for the moment. She adjusted the seat, which had been moved back  for someone taller, and she tilted the rearview mirror downward. Her own  face flashed toward her, round and slightly shiny, her blue eyes quirked  at the inner corners as if she were worried about something when in fact  she was only straining to see in the gloom. She shifted gears and sailed  smoothly toward the front of the shop, where the manager stood frowning at  a clipboard just outside his office door.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Today’s question on AM Baltimore was: “What Makes an Ideal Marriage?” A  woman was phoning in to say it was common interests. “Like if you both  watch the same kind of programs on TV,” she explained. Maggie couldn’t  care less what made an ideal marriage. (She’d been married twenty-eight  years.) She rolled down her window and called, “Bye now!” and the manager  glanced up from his clipboard. She glided past him—a woman in charge of  herself, for once, lipsticked and medium-heeled and driving an undented  car.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    A soft voice on the radio said, “Well, I’m about to remarry? The first  time was purely for love? It was genuine, true love and it didn’t work at  all. Next Saturday I’m marrying for security.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Maggie looked over at the dial and said, “Fiona?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    She meant to brake, but accelerated instead and shot out of the garage and  directly into the street. A Pepsi truck approaching from the left smashed  into her left front fender—the only spot that had never, up till now, had  the slightest thing go wrong   with it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Back when Maggie played baseball with her brothers, she used to get hurt  but say she was fine, for fear they would make her quit. She’d pick  herself up and run on without a limp, even if her knee was killing her.  Now she was reminded of that, for when the manager rushed over, shouting,  “What the . . . ? Are you all right?” she stared straight ahead in a  dignified way and told him, “Certainly. Why do you ask?” and drove on  before the Pepsi driver could climb out of his truck, which was probably  just as well considering the look on his face. But in fact her fender was  making a very upsetting noise, something like a piece of tin dragging over  gravel, so as soon as she’d turned the corner and the two men—one  scratching his head, one waving his arms—had disappeared from her rearview  mirror, she came to a stop. Fiona was not on the radio anymore. Instead a  woman with a raspy tenor was comparing her five husbands. Maggie cut the  motor and got out. She could see what was causing the trouble. The fender  was crumpled inward so the tire was hitting against it; she was surprised  the wheel could turn, even. She squatted on the curb, grasped the rim of  the fender in both hands, and tugged. (She remembered hunkering low in the  tall grass of the outfield and stealthily, wincingly peeling her jeans leg  away from the patch of blood on her knee.) Flakes of gray-blue paint fell  into her lap. Someone passed on the sidewalk behind her but she pretended  not to notice and tugged again. This time the fender moved, not far but  enough to clear the tire, and she stood up and dusted off her hands. Then  she climbed back inside the car but for a minute simply sat there.  “Fiona!” she said again. When she restarted the engine, the radio was  advertising bank loans and she switched it off.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Ira was waiting in front of his store, unfamiliar and oddly dashing in his  navy suit. A shock of ropy black, gray-threaded hair hung over his  forehead. Above him a metal sign swung in the breeze: sam’s frame shop.  picture framing. matting. your needlework professionally displayed. Sam  was Ira’s father, who had not had a thing to do with the business since  coming down with a “weak heart” thirty years before. Maggie always put  “weak heart” in quotation marks. She made a point of ignoring the  apartment windows above the shop, where Sam spent his cramped, idle,  querulous days with Ira’s two sisters. He would probably be standing there  watching. She parked next to the curb and slid over to the passenger seat.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Ira’s expression was a study as he approached the car. Starting out  pleased and approving, he rounded the hood and drew up short when he came  upon the left fender. His long, bony, olive face grew longer. His eyes,  already so narrow you couldn’t be sure if they were black or merely dark  brown, turned to puzzled, downward-slanting slits. He opened the door and  got in and gave her a sorrowful stare.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “There was an unexpected situation,” Maggie told him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Just between here and the body shop?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “I heard Fiona on the radio.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “That’s five blocks! Just five or six blocks.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Ira, Fiona’s getting married.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He gave up thinking of the car, she was relieved to see. Something cleared  on his forehead. He looked at her a moment and then said, “Fiona who?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Fiona your daughter-in-law, Ira. How many Fionas do we know? Fiona the  mother of your only grandchild, and now she’s up and marrying some total  stranger purely for security.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Ira slid the seat farther back and then pulled away from the curb. He  seemed to be listening for something—perhaps for the sound of the wheel  hitting. But evidently her tug on the fender had done the trick. He said,  “Where’d you hear this?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “On the radio while I was driving.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “They’d announce a thing like that on the radio?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “She telephoned it in.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “That seems kind of . . . self-important, if you want my honest opinion,”  Ira said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “No, she was just—and she said that Jesse was the only one she’d ever  truly loved.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “She said this on the radio?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “It was a talk show, Ira.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Well, I don’t know why everyone has to go spilling their guts in public  these days,” Ira said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Do you suppose Jesse could have been listening?” Maggie asked. The  thought had just occurred to her.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Jesse? At this hour? He’s doing well if he’s up before noon.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Maggie didn’t argue with that, although she could have. The fact was that  Jesse was an early riser, and anyhow, he worked on Saturdays. What Ira was  implying was that he was shiftless. (Ira was much harder on their son than  Maggie was. He didn’t see half as many good points to him.) She faced  forward and watched the shops and houses sliding past, the few pedestrians  out with their dogs. This had been the driest summer in memory and the  sidewalks had a chalky look. The air hung like gauze. A boy in front of  Poor Man’s Grocery was tenderly dusting his bicycle spokes with a cloth.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “So you started out on Empry Street,” Ira said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Hmm?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Where the body shop is.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Yes, Empry Street.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “And then cut over to Daimler . . .”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He was back on the subject of the fender. She said, “I did it driving out  of the garage.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “You mean right there? Right at the body shop?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “I went to hit the brake but I hit the gas instead.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “How could that happen?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Well, Fiona came on the radio and I was startled.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “I mean the brake isn’t something you have to think about, Maggie. You’ve  been driving since you were sixteen years old. How could you mix up the  brake with the gas pedal?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “I just did, Ira. All right? I just got startled and I did. So let’s drop  it.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “I mean a brake is more or less reflex.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “If it means so much to you I’ll pay for it out of my salary.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Now it was his turn to hold his tongue. She saw him start to speak and  then change his mind. (Her salary was laughable. She tended old folks in a  nursing home.)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    If they’d had more warning, she thought, she would have cleaned the car’s  interior before they set out. The dashboard was littered with parking-lot  stubs. Soft-drink cups and paper napkins covered the floor at her feet.  Also there were loops of black and red wire sagging beneath the glove  compartment; nudge them accidentally as you crossed your legs and you’d  disconnect the radio. She considered that to be Ira’s doing. Men just  generated wires and cords and electrical tape everywhere they went,  somehow. They might not even be aware of it.The Pulitzer Prize-winning novel [quote]--The Boston Globe","brand":"Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46301648617701,"sku":"NP9780345485571","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780345485571.jpg?v=1767723060","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/breathing-lessons-isbn-9780345485571","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}