Cram Your Snide Comments Up Your Cramhole

Contrary to my wife's petty prognostication, here is my review of February's book. Ahem...

What was it called? Breathing Lessons? Hmm. Intriguing. As I recall, the title was cleverly based on the 27 words devoted to one of the protagonists taking her former daughter-in-law to her Lamaze classes. Way to make that extra effort, Anne Tyler.

Anyway, the book focused on a married couple, Ira and Maggie, and a trip to a funeral. Some stuff happened, but mainly I was struck with an enduring image of two 50-somethings trying to do the nasty in a widow's bedroom. Icky.

Tyler divided the book into possibly three or four sections, most of which were written from Maggie's POV. She certainly was whiny. As Monique pointed out, Maggie desperately wants everyone she meets, every single person, to be happy. But the lengths she goes to to achieve happiness for others is both beyond the realms of believability and shockingly annoying. Maggie has her nose in everyone's business to the point of pushing them away. Lucky for her, she has Ira to show her the errors of her ways, and shoulder the horrifying responsibility of being married to her.

For his part, Ira is detached from everything around him. He plays a lot of Solitaire, and wants nothing more than to go to the funeral of his wife's friend's husband, then turn around and go back to Baltimore, where he can run his frame shop and feel beholden to his father and idiot sisters. Ira, I get. His children disappoint him, his father crushed his dreams of med school and his wife is an overwrought simpleton. So he doesn't sweat the small stuff, and he takes care of the things he's supposed to take care of, and he lives completely within himself. Three cheers for self-reliance!

Speaking of Ira, the one spectacular facet of the book was Tyler's depiction of Ira. I generally think that female authors do a crappy job of writing male characters. In most chick-lit, men are hurriedly scribbled down, painted with as many broad stereotypes as possible, so the good-looking guy is always good, and the bad guy is transparently so. Cads! It's possible that male authors are just as guilty of the same activity when writing women; I wouldn't know.

But Anne Tyler did surprising justice to the male gender when she concocted Ira. Everything about him rang true to me, except for his subconscious whistling of songs apropos to every moment, without his knowledge. That's a bit asinine. But overall, Ira was written like a real male, good and bad.

I'm not in love with the book. I would have preferred some Jay McInerney or Bret Easton Ellis for the '80s. I did not cry at any point, except when I tried to sleep the night after I read the geriatric make-out scene. Ewwww. Nasty. It was fairly predictable, and offered little character growth. The secondary characters were all two dimensional, and neither one was the intriguing fourth dimension, or even the silky-smooth Fifth Dimension. Personally, I either didn't see or can't remember any revelation at the end of the book. Everyone is still basically in the exact same place they were at the beginning of the book, despite 300+ pages of Maggie's finagling. Maybe that's the point: nothing really changes except our skin condition. Huzzah for my revelation!!