The Penguin Podcast is back! Listen Now
Breathing Lessons

Breathing Lessons

Summary

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

Reviews

  • A work of art
    Guardian

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.
Learn More

Sign up to the Penguin Newsletter

For the latest books, recommendations, author interviews and more