(Published by Vintage)
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The femmes universally slammed Anne Tyler’s Back When We Were Grown-ups when we read it back in 2004; in fact it was the book that gave rise to the famous “itchy tights” quote from our Connoisseur.
The biggest problem we had with it was annoyance, or at the very least lack of sympathy, with the central character. Because Tyler is so lauded as a writer (with praise from a bevy of publications and authors adorning her book-sleeves) I was happy to give her another chance with Breathing Lessons. But once again, Tyler’s main protagonist, a middle-aged woman, has failed to win me over.
Maggie is married to Ira and they have two children: Daisy a remote and highly organised academic (read Lisa Simpson) and Jesse, a rough at the edges high school drop-out and aspiring small town rockstar (yes, you could read Bart Simpson). Jesse got his seventeen-year-old girlfriend Fiona pregnant but hasn’t seen his daughter since Fiona walked out during an argument when the baby, Leroy, was not yet one. Maggie is a disaster-prone meddler; Ira is her barely tolerant, but under it all truly loving, husband.
Tyler’s talent lies in her ability to convey unerringly the very ordinariness of everyday life. Her dialogue and her eye for human flaws is impeccable, but for me this is also exactly where she falls down.
I guess I’m not target market for this kind of stuff: presumably it is intended to strike a chord with people who identify with Maggie’s regret, her feeling that life has somehow held out on its initial promise, her wish that things could have been better.
What is most annoying about Maggie is her inability to leave well alone, her refusal to accept that her son is never going to make it up with his ex-wife, her blindness to the fact that the only life she has complete control of is her own. If she wants to be a grandmother to Leroy she has the power to sort that out without needing Jesse in the picture. The only redeeming factor, as with Back When We Were Grown-ups, is the underlying theme of how family love can triumph over our very ordinariness and our flaws. Here’s it’s seen in the relationship between Maggie and Ira.
Tyler is a great writer, and perhaps she paints a true picture, but what I found worst of all was the fact that Maggie doesn’t learn anything by the end of the book – the point presumably being that people tend not to. It’s this futility, this sense that nothing changes, that we must all learn to bumble along to repeat the same arguments, to bicker over the same things again and again that makes this an ultimately depressing read, no matter how well-observed. 
Also by Anne Tyler
Back When We Were Grown-ups
