The Mystery of Breathing: A Novel Review

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(More customer reviews)The Mystery of Breathing works on a number of levels. The novel is unsurpassed as a piece of literary fiction, but it also works as an intellectually astute character study, a riveting thriller, and as an insight into the world of premature babies and the medical professionals who fight to save their lives. Klass peppers her narrative with short, sharp sentences and alternatively jumps between the past and the present; the result is a narrative that has an almost urgent and frenzied quality, fitting perfectly with the concurrent themes of ambition and career.
The main protagonist in the Mystery of Breathing is Maggie Claymore, a leading neonatologist at a busy Boston hospital. She's absolutely committed to her work - she works long hours, and fanatically assists in bringing the smallest and sickest babies back to life. Her loyal husband Dan, who also works as a doctor for the underprivileged, understands her commitment, and generally supports her in her endeavors.
Maggie is organized, disciplined, and reliable - "a neat person who needs her world to be neat." She's also an excellent, compassionate and ambitious practitioner, but she has a tendency to be egotistical, arrogant and "far too wedded to her own arguments." She thinks nothing of berating other doctors and inexperienced medical interns for being hesitant and not knowing enough about their job. The novel opens with her dramatic resuscitation of a premature baby, who teetered on the verge of death until Maggie's skill helps the tiny lungs take a breath. Then, in front of nurses and staff, she chews out a resident for not being more prepared for emergencies.
The same day she gets a malicious and hate-filled letter that vilifies her as being evil and self-satisfied. Soon letters blasting her competence and hinting at her responsibility in the death of a child are posted on walls around the hospital and are being sent to hospital officials. One evening, she returns to her office to find a bedpan full of someone's nasty diarrhea on her desk. Maggie's world of professional security and temerity begins to fall apart as the administrators hire a detective to frantically find the letter writer. But the damage is already done - her co-workers are whispering behind her back, and many of the colleagues start admitting that Maggie - determined to save every baby's life no matter the cost - is far too aggressive in reviving infants who will more than likely end up with brain damage or serious health problems.

Klass juxtaposes Maggie's modern dramas with a look back at her life as a child, and as a teenager where her religiously conservative, unfocussed mother, Annalisa tries to instill a "cramped and pinched life" into Maggie. Good friends who felt sorry for her poor and single state so carefully scrutinized Annalisa. But Maggie is an example of a modern woman who has reinvented herself, her home, her sex life, and her personal relationships. She realizes that she doesn't have to grow up to live the life in which she was raised and that she can pick and choose a life from "the great treasure chamber of the world."
Much of the narrative focuses on Maggie's internal life, and as the smear campaign gets worse, a conflict begins to rage within her. She finds herself asking why she's here and what she's feeling. Maybe her experiences in the neonatal unit will make her a more understanding person, aware of her own vulnerability and of the quirks and turns of fate. The Mystery of Breathing is a finely balanced, subtle novel that says a lot about the costs of career, the revelations of our hidden secrets, and the fear of being exposed. Mike Leonard November 04.


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