Breathing Lessons by Anne TylerRead about the other entries on the list.
Tyler has been my number-one literary idol since my early teens. This novel is unconventional because we get the entire story of a marriage between one Baltimore couple, Maggie and Ira, told in a masterful slippage between the present--when they are travelling to a funeral--and the past. It’s about love as it is actually lived, day to day, year to year, rather than the clichéd, idealised forms of love we’re so often subjected to in fiction.
--Marshal Zeringue